Chapter 1 #2
“Oh, good! Do you read Chinese literature?”
“I read Chinese literature.” I had read Chinese authors in English translation for a world literature seminar, and I hoped this counted.
“Who are some Chinese authors you like?”
Suddenly I could not recall the name of a single Chinese author I had ever encountered except Lu Xun, who did I not want to mention, because Lu Xun was widely regarded as the father of modern Chinese literature.
Saying “Lu Xun” would be like saying my favorite English author was Shakespeare. At last I managed: “Zhang Ailing.”
“Oh, how wonderful! She’s very well known in China. Can you say more about what interests you about her work?”
Now I was in trouble. We had gone off script.
I wanted to say that I had read Zhang Ailing only in English translation, but that even in translation her descriptive power and insight into interpersonal relationships had floored me, and that I found her grayscale author photo in which she wore an elegant cheongsam both alluring and pretentious, that I had spent a lot of time thinking about what it meant to be a female author who wanted critical acclaim and also to look pretty.
But I didn’t know how to say any of that in Chinese.
Here were the terms I did know: “World War II,” “Shanghai,” “city,” “relationships.” These were all keywords I understood to be generally associated with Zhang Ailing.
I cobbled these concepts together with the grammar I had at my disposal while repeating that I found all this very interesting, very interesting.
Teacher Huang and Teacher Zhang gave no indication whether this answer was good or bad.
“Do you have any other questions, or is there anything else you’d like to tell us?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Um, I . . .” I had wanted to tell them I was looking forward to the program, but in the moment, I forgot how to say “looking forward.” I didn’t think I’d ever been taught how to say I was looking forward to something.
Instead I said, “I’m very happy I can come to Taiwan. And study. Along with you.”
“We’re very happy you can come too,” said Teacher Huang. She beamed and waved, wiggling her fingers. “Bye-bye!”
They left the meeting. I sat awhile at my desk, staring at my hands.
ANNA WAS WAITING FOR ME OUTSIDE THE ARRIVALS GATE.
SHE’D gotten in half an hour earlier on a connecting flight from Tokyo.
We had long ago traded flight numbers, studied the terminal maps, and designated a rendezvous point, in case neither of us had cell service, and yet it seemed a miracle that we had reunited here on the other side of the world.
We took each other in—rank breath, eye cheese, greasy hair—and giggled.
“You have to see the bathrooms,” said Anna. “They’re the cleanest public bathrooms I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
We bought tokens for the purple express train, which would take us from the airport to Taipei Main Station in half an hour.
We had meticulously researched this route, had even watched a vlog of a traveler documenting the entire journey, but still it was a relief when the token stand did exist, the tokens cost what the internet said they would, and the purple train did come.
We emerged aboveground and I saw an expanse of high-rises against hills blooming into mountains.
I had read that Taipei was a city built inside a valley on an island, and this meant an abundance of rainfall.
Everything was dewy all the time. Taipei did not have the hard brilliance I associated with the tropics: no golden beaches, no vibrant blues.
It was all a humid blur, mountains and forests shimmering under a wet patina of green.
Anna and I were the only tourists in our train car.
No one else had such bulky suitcases, and no one else was gawking out the windows like they’d never seen a mountain before.
I guessed they were commuters, or locals returning from short trips.
My chest tightened, and as I watched the hills rising and falling around us, my eyes prickled.
I didn’t know how to make sense of this feeling.
Could you be homesick for a place you had never been?
ANNA AND I HAD BECOME FRIENDS BECAUSE WE SAT NEXT TO EACH other in language section.
The first thing I noticed about her was her laugh.
She laughed every time someone made a goofy mistake, like when they said “horse” when they meant “mom,” or “prostitute” instead of “chicken,” or when they forgot to use the tense particle 了, so instead of saying “I did my homework,” they uttered a panicked “I do my homework!” It wasn’t a mean laugh—it was adorable, a helpless titter, and most of the time she was laughing at herself.
She had a round baby face, full of good intentions.
Her laughter freed up the whole class. You could take risks, you could make mistakes, because at worst it would make Anna laugh.
I always paired up with her for group exercises, and we were always giggling so hard that we couldn’t finish our assigned dialogues—like when I had to pretend to be her mother, disappointed by her report card, or when she had to confess she had a crush on my sister.
I did not know Anna well outside Chinese class.
In fact, I was surprised to hear her voice at the airport.
We had rarely spoken in English in person; since the semester ended, we had only communicated through texts and emails.
But this felt for the best. It would have been strange to come to Taipei with any other friends from my freshman year—the friends who knew my English self, my real self.
Anna had only ever known me in Chinese. That meant I could construct an identity here, in front of her, and it wouldn’t feel like pretending.
WE HAD BOUGHT ELECTRONIC SIM CARDS AT THE AIRPORT, AND halfway between Taoyuan and Taipei, I began receiving a signal. I texted my family: Landed safely, on my way to the apartment. It was late at night for them, but both my parents responded within seconds.
Be safe, said my father.
Be very careful and drink only filtered or bottled water, said my mother.
Jasmine, my older sister, did not respond; she never responded to anything in the family chat. But there was a text from my younger sister, Flora. Did you make it?
This was a concession. Flora and I had fought before I left.
I’d already forgotten the inciting incident—likely something stupid, like whether she had stolen my favorite pajama shorts—but it had blown up into an apocalyptic exchange.
Flora hadn’t come to the airport, and I hadn’t said goodbye to her.
I knew I had left her in the middle of a family meltdown, the sort we had every few months.
I knew that she was scared of being alone more than she was angry.
And I felt guilty about it, but not enough to cancel my trip.
Yes! I sent her a picture of the hills.
Nice, she wrote. Are you going to see grandma and grandpa?
I felt a twinge of annoyance. Not on this trip.
Isn’t it like really close?
It’s hours away. And I don’t have a visa for the mainland.
A pause on Flora’s end. Then: Just feels weird to fly all the way there and not go.
But she knew I didn’t have a visa. She’d been there for that fight. She was only asking to be cruel. I didn’t respond, and she didn’t text me again.
WE CHANGED TO THE RED LINE AT TAIPEI MAIN STATION.
HERE WE bought subway passes—IC cards—and loaded them up with money, a process that took longer than I felt it should.
You couldn’t buy cards at the machines, you could only refill them, so we had to ask a man in a kiosk window, but he only took cash, and so we found an ATM and took turns withdrawing money, guarding each other’s backs just in case we were mugged.
I had picked up this habit from my mother.
It didn’t matter what city you were in: Any ATM was a place where you might be mugged.
It cost NT$100 for the card itself, and then we had to add transit value.
We consulted: NT$600 seemed a good place to start.
The exchange rate was NT$30 for US$1, so that was twenty dollars on a metro card, and that seemed like a reasonable amount to spend in a month.
I was getting in the habit of dividing everything by thirty.
Anna and I had both received funding from a Taiwanese government program that encouraged foreign students to study Chinese at local institutions, which meant our fellowship money was to be disbursed in Taiwanese currency, but that didn’t matter.
I could grasp the value of things only through conversion to the dollar.
The metro system was amazing. Clean glass walls partitioned the trains from the platforms. Everyone queued politely along double lines painted on the ground.
Lights counted down in five-second increments the time until the next train’s arrival, never more than five minutes away, and on the very second, the red line train toward Xiangshan glided smoothly onto the platform.
We got off at Dongmen station. We dragged our bags up the stairs and out exit 6, as our landlord had instructed us, and emerged onto the bumpy sidewalks of Yongkang Street.
Open shop fronts offered shaved ice with fruit syrups, bubble teas, noodle bowls, sliced dragon fruit, whole bushels of lychee and longan, steamed pork buns, nougat cracker sandwiches, scallion pancakes.
The offerings astounded me. This was not like New Haven, where everything you needed was locked behind glass; here it was all in the open air, pushed out in front of you, prices written out on hanging wooden placards.
You didn’t need to know the words; you could just point.
Three employees at the same store tried to give me samples of freeze-dried strawberries, and I wished I knew a more colloquial response than “No want—no want—thank you.”