Taipei - the door to the spirit world is opened
The candy project is now reaching its final weeks. I have gotten positive feedback from both the patients and the nurses in the clinic, so it remains only to see if the candy will have its desired effects. This week, I started designing the post-intervention surveys to measure how much of the candy is consumed by the patients themselves and how much is reaching the IDU community, as well as patient impressions of the whole project. I’m using two separate surveys: one for current patients and one for incoming patients. This will determine whether similar methods could be used in the future as clinic advertising or as a way to reinforce positive health messages for current patients.
Unfortunately, I was unable to use a pre-test to acquire baseline data, because at the time I arrived, the patients didn’t know who I was or how much Chinese I could understand. I also hadn’t provided them with any deliverables at that point, so it’s likely that if I had handed out a pre-test I would have had a low return rate. In addition, it took me three weeks to develop the messages that are placed on the candy. Designing, editing, translating, back-translating, submitting and collecting a pre-test would likely have taken an additional week, at which point the time remaining for the intervention might have been too short to show results. Finally, I know I can get basic background information on the patients from the intake surveys collected by the clinic. So my study design is relatively weak (post-test only), but it does allow me to manage the project almost entirely by myself (interns here are expected to run their own projects largely unassisted), and increases the possibility of seeing some results.
Aside from my project, I’ve had the opportunity to observe some major cultural events. Last week an announcement appeared on the Taiwanese news channel that “the door to the spirit world has opened!” August is the “ghost month” on the Chinese lunar calendar, the period when deceased ancestors can visit the world of the living. During this month, Taiwanese people set up altars in their homes and doorways with offerings to their ancestral spirits – usually food, beverages and paper money. They pray over the offerings with joss sticks and burn the money in fireproof outdoor bins. After the ancestors have had a chance to eat and drink their fill, the offerings are taken down and shared among the living.
Although I didn’t participate in praying over the offerings, I did join my coworkers’ conversations about their experiences with ghosts or ancestral spirits. Most of my coworkers say they have seen or heard a ghost at some point, usually in their college dormitory. This isn’t surprising, as dormitories in Taiwan are generally quite old and therefore have long histories of both corporal and spiritual habitation. I haven’t seen any ghosts myself yet, but I did find out that the fastest way to end these conversations is to mention I’m living alone in a dormitory. Personally, I don’t expect to see many ghosts; my dorm room may look like it was built during the Ming dynasty, but it doesn’t have the air I would expect of haunted buildings (although the attic upstairs looks like a good place to hide bodies). Should any ghosts appear, I hope to avoid doing anything that would incur their displeasure, and to wish them a speedy journey back to the spirit world at the end of the month.