The Garbage Man

Please Note: Things said in Chinese will appear in bold and at times our Chinese may appear better than it actually is. The questions were written down in Chinese but sometimes the meaning was unclear.

Lewis:                   What’s your name?

Garbage Man:   My name is Jen Gwor Pi. Jen. Jen. Gwor. Pi.

Lewis:                   Jen Gwor Pi.

Garbage Man:   Yeah.

Lewis:                  Do you have an English name?

Garbage Man:   My nickname is Gwor Tie (national-prosperity).

Lewis:                   Do you have an English name?

Garbage Man:   No. I don’t have an English name. Why should I have an English name, I’m Taiwanese? My name is Jen Gwor Pi. My nickname is Gwor Tie.

Lewis:                   Your job?

Garbage Man:   My job is collecting rubbish from the streets.

Lewis:                   How old…

Garbage Man:   How old are you? I’m 62 years old.

Lewis:                   62?

Garbage Man:   Yeah. 62 years old.

Lewis:                   Were you born…

Garbage Man:   I’m from Changhua. Now, I’m living on Section 3 Yenping North Road. In Taipei.

Lewis:                   You live in Taipei?

Garbage Man:   Yeah. I’m living in Taipei. That’s right.

Lewis:                   And where in Taipei?

Garbage Man:   Where? I live in Taipei. I live on Jochen Street, Jochen Street…in Taipei.

Rick:                       OK. Jochen Street. I don’t know where but it’s in Taipei.

Garbage Man:   Yeah. Jochen Street. That’s all, there’s nothing else I can say about that.

Lewis:                   How long have you lived in Taipei?

Garbage Man:   How long in Taipei? Yeah? I’ve been living in Taipei since I was 13. Now I’m 62 so that’s more than 40 years.

Rick:                       About 40…

Garbage Man:   I’m 62 years old yeah?

Lewis:                   What do you like about Taipei?

Garbage:             What do you like about Taipei? No, that’s wrong. My fathers business collapsed so my family moved to Taipei.

Rick:                       What do you like about Taipei?

Garbage Man:   I don’t like anything about Taipei. My father’s business failed so I had to come here.

Rick:                       Is there anything at all you like?

Garbage Man:   No, I told you, Taipei has nothing that makes any kind of impression, good things are good bad things are bad.

Rick:                       Nothing special.

Garbage Man:   What don’t you like? There’s nothing that I don’t like. Nothing.

Lewis:                   Nothing? Maybe about the people, or the…

Garbage Man:   There’s nothing I can answer. There’s nothing I don’t like. Nothing. A special place?

Rick:                       Maybe there’s a place that you like? Is there anything you’d like to recommend to foreigners?

Garbage Man:   No. I really don’t know where. It’s hard for me to say. Xini district? I’ve been living in Taipei for so long.

Rick:                       Where have you been that you liked?

I know the city so well but I’ve not visited all the places…but among the places that I have visited, Yami Shan is…beautiful.

Rick:                       Yami Shan mountain.

Garbage Man:   And the youth park is nice.

Lewis:                   What’s the most unusual thing that’s happened to him or he’s seen in Taipei?

Garbage Man: This question…no! I have no idea.

Lewis:                   He’s been here 40 years. He must have seen something crazy.

Rick:                       Have you seen anything special on the streets like political campaigns or anything?

Garbage Man:   I don’t care about politics. I’m not interested in politics at all and I won’t go to any political campaigns or activities.

Rick:                       Have you seen anything unpleasant on the street, weird people, something disgusting?

Garbage Man:   I don’t take any notice in that. I don’t care about that. If I do see unpleasant things like that I just walk away.

Rick:                       No.

Lewis:                   And now the difficult one.

Rick:                       This question is from someone else in Taipei. It’s a random question. You’ll choose it and it’s from someone living in Taipei.

We use the random question dice shaker. The question is ‘If you could hit anyone in the world who would you hit?’ from Lewis.

Garbage Man:   Who would I hit? Nobody.

Rick:                       Is there anybody that you’d like to hit?

Garbage Man:   It’s hard to answer why should I punch someone without any reason? Really, nobody. If two people have some kind of conflict then they fight if not why would they fight? One time  I bumped into this guy and so I  apologized but the man I bumped into was angry, he wanted to get even with me somehow…so we fought.

Rick:                       So now there’s nobody that you want to hit?

Garbage Man:   I wouldn’t like to hit anyone as long as it wasn’t a big deal.

Rick:                       He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to hit anybody.

Garbage Man:   Eh!  But if you wanted to take my wife away from me then I would definitely fight you.

Lewis:                   I wish he could write a question for somebody else. It can be anything at all.

Rick:                       Could you write a question for someone else in Taipei?

Garbage Man:   I have no questions for others. This is difficult for me. There’s nothing that I want to ask anybody.

His question was, ‘What do you like about Taipei?’ We gave the Garbage Man the love heart sticker from the Artist. He gave it back because he had no use for it. He also refused to take one of the postcards that we give everybody.