Why does another Mass times site exist? Read my story →
A thousand kids watched me get named the instigator. Not long after, I found a world none of them had a login to. A 1990s Hsinchu childhood, a public shaming, and the first door to a place where no one could see me.
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October in Hsin-Chu, but the sun comes down like it forgot the month. Guan Dong Elementary sits on the outskirts of the Science Park, the hub for semiconductor development, but this is not a magnet school where they send their kids. It is a country school. Plenty of Hakka folks. Families who just aren't that rich. A thousand kids sitting mostly cross-legged on the warm grass. Skinny by today's standards.
The morning assembly just finished singing the Taiwanese national anthem. The flag waves on a pole behind the stage. It gets quiet.
On the stage, six students squat in a row with their hands held straight out. I am one of them.
Towering behind us is the 主任. The vice principal. She holds a microphone in one hand and a bamboo stick in the other. It is the thick kind. Enough to hurt, but it leaves a mark for a couple of hours, not a day. Her shoes are dark and shined and you can see them moving slowly behind each squatting kid, one pair of shoes at a time.
"Wang Min-Wei, Chen Chih-Han."
She paces behind us. Her voice is stern with unmistakable authority.
"Lower." She interrupts the name-listing to call out a kid whose knees are buckling. His body shakes like it is giving out.
"These are the kids who jumped from the second floor on the East-facing building on the fourth grade side," she says in Chinese on the microphone. "All of them. Do you know how hurt you could be?"
A thousand kids inhale at the same time.
She stops walking. The shined shoes are behind me now. I am the sixth kid in line. Big head, glasses too small for it. She pauses.
"Chang Yi-Han."
She shakes her head. She looks down at me. She lowers her voice and the microphone makes it worse, not quieter. A whisper at full volume. "Never thought it'd be you. Why would you do this?"
My mind is already racing. I didn't force anyone. It was a few coins, not even real money. They jumped onto dirt and grass. Nobody cried. Nobody bled. We're still friends. I am building the case in my head while my knees shake.
She lifts the mic back to the whole school. "Yi-Han paid them all money to jump off the second floor. No, he didn't do it himself. He's not that stupid. But is it still wrong?"
"Yes," a thousand kids yell back at once. At me. Their eyes still wide.
She speaks louder now. Firmer. It is not only wrong. I am just as guilty. In law there is a word in Chinese for this. 教唆犯. Instigator. Don't do it again, is that clear.
My knees sink lower. My eyes drop to the ground. My hands curl up a little. The case in my head doesn't matter. The word does. There is no coming back from this.
Around second grade, I started to learn there were kids a lot badder than me. I learned Hokkien cuss words about your mom, or your dad dying. But that was about the extent of it.
After the assembly, I walk near the office. A teacher who used to drive me to art competitions walks past. She just looks at me and shakes her head in disappointment.
At home that night, I pull out the parent-teacher book that is supposed to get signed every day. I see the note from the school. I pause. Then I pull out a pen and sign it myself, right in the parent box.
For a whole year I am anxious. But they never find out.
It wouldn't be the last time I hid stuff from my parents.
My mom has a knack for being creative about my education. She recruits college kids who half babysit me after school, half teach me. At eleven years old, I get two college students from Tsing-Hua. One teaches me math. He also teaches me how to develop a pocket in my baseball glove overnight with a rubber band. I look up to them like big brothers. They live by themselves. One has a girlfriend who sleeps over. He has posters of Legends of the Fall and Braveheart on his wall.
But Uncle Chang is the cooler of the two. He is a CS major. It is the nineties, and software is just taking off.
I remember the smell of new electronics in the computer stores in Hsin-Chu. Taking home a machine that costs $50,000NT. The Windows 95 boot screen comes up and the blue light washes over Uncle Chang's face and my face.
In Uncle Chang's room, discs lay scattered on his desk with serial numbers written on them in black marker. Office - KDMKSD-RKSDFJLK-DJW20-XK4M9... He shows me how to compile C++ with Borland in DOS. It's pretty boring, but we keep it going for months before something really catches my interest.
He shows me his university's BBS, homepages, webmasters. We wait three whole minutes for a single pixelated photo to crawl down the Netscape window, and I sit there, mouth wide.
Soon he helps me make my own page in HTML. I write about me, my family, my school. I've always loved writing, and now the writing has somewhere to go. I cover it in animated GIFs, blinking all across the page. Seeing my home on the internet, I can't stop smiling.
Then I am back at my real home. The parent-teacher book is in my bag with my own signature in the parent box. It has been months. They still haven't found out. I have gotten numb to carrying it.
I sit at the computer. I dial up to HiNet, one of Taiwan's first ISPs. The Microsoft ergonomic keyboard is split in the middle and my hands are small enough that I fit nicely into each half. I type hclin-3308 without looking. It is my mom's login. I type it so fast it is just muscle memory.
I connect to the Tsing-Hua BBS. The connection holds. I buy computer magazines with my allowance and read them cover to cover, but the news is always a little old by the time it reaches a stand in Hsin-Chu. This is the same stuff. But somebody typed it a minute ago and it is on my screen. I scroll past programming threads. I scroll past an argument about the Pentium. A club looking for new members. Someone selling a used textbook, half price, barely written in. Just text and names rolling up the screen in the dark.
Then something catches my attention.
「我的洞很癢，誰來幫幫我」
I know all the words. A hole. Itching. Help me. I don't know what they mean together, but my face gets hot. The replies are stacked under it.
None of my friends at school have this. Nobody knows I am here.
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