I saw this school desk at the local flea market and it gave me a laugh. I remember how boring school can sometimes be, and that boredom often manifests itself in vandalized textbooks and desks. This Taiwanese school desk was no different.
It looks like this desk was in Mr class （索東老師）. In the middle of the desk there’s a couple of caricatures of teacher Dōng, and someone has appraised the illustrations by saying 很像 （hěn xiàng）”very similar” i.e. looks just like him.
The kids had affectionately given him the nickname Dōng Dōng. You can see his name written in a turd on the top right of the desk. There’s turds all over the desk, which suggest that poo was the chosen symbol of rebellion, rather than the cocks, which were drawn all over textbooks when I was in school.
Over on the right someone else has tried to stop the vandalism, adding their note: 請勿亂畫桌子 “please don’t graffiti the desk”.
Conveniently someone’s written the date, it looks like 97年8月5日. The day isn’t very clear but it looks like a five. The characters are 年 year, 月 month and 日 day . The year will be the Taiwanese 民國紀元 – The ROC calendar system, and dates this vandalism at 2008. Not as old as I’d hoped. Dōng Dōng is probably still teaching there and being harassed by the kids.
There is more vandalism, but it’s difficult to make it all out:
Next to the message about not drawing on the desk it says: 自己不是＿畫＿＿！？
Then on the bottom it says ＿你媽 (probably a slander at someone’s mum) and then 李死＿.
It’s difficult to make it out, if you can take a guess please post a comment.
Here’s a larger image of the full desk (click for large).
