Chapter 7
Courtesy of the author
It rained overnight, and the morning air was cool and sweet.
Everyone was in a good mood. The hallways were full of hugs and goodbyes, email exchanges, promises to visit.
It was hard to believe that we were in the last week of class, that the program could be over in only three days, when it had seemed for the past two months that we would be cramming flash cards in the student lounge for the rest of our lives.
I was excited to get to my one-on-one class. I hadn’t seen Teacher Sun since my final presentation, and I was hoping she would tell me what a great job I’d done.
“Oh, hi, Lily! Sit, sit.” Teacher Sun was chortling at her phone when I entered the room. “One of my former students just had his baby!” She turned the phone around to show me a white man cradling a bundle in his arms, his wife obscured in the background.
“Wow, congratulations! Does he live in America?”
“No, Taipei! It’s a really interesting story.
” She clapped her hands together. “He was a finance major when I met him. He wanted to work for one of those big banks, you know? They were all opening Asia branches back then, and he wanted to improve his Chinese so he could become a division head in Shanghai or something. I think perhaps his chances were not very good back in America. Like, he wasn’t that good at finance—that’s just the impression I got.
But everyone was trying to make it big in Asia. ”
“So did he?”
“He came really close! He did have an interview for a Shanghai branch of some bank. They flew him all the way to New York.” Teacher Sun sighed. “But in the end, he didn’t get it.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I had a hunch. I knew it was going to go badly. Young men like that, they crack under pressure. They said something nasty to him, and it threw him off. He got defensive, and then he couldn’t recover.”
“Wow,” I said. “Did he tell you that?”
“No, but I guessed that’s what had happened.
I could just tell from the look on his face when he said it hadn’t gone well.
They do that sometimes at these big firms. They test you on purpose; they want to see how you react in adverse circumstances.
Banking is really stressful, and you have to deal with lots of nasty clients.
But this student wasn’t cut out for an environment like that.
He was nice enough, but he always had a weak constitution.
He couldn’t take criticism. Anyway, that experience was a great psychological shock to him.
” She waved her hand. “I was worried about him then—he seemed seriously depressed. He kept showing up for classes, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it.
He wasn’t doing his homework, and he couldn’t focus on anything.
Finally I told him that he was wasting tuition money just showing up like this but not learning, so he dropped out of the program. ”
“Bummer,” I said.
“But he’s fine now! He never went back to America—I think he was unhappy there.
He married a local girl, can you believe it?
They founded an educational consulting company here in Taipei.
They help Taiwanese students get into foreign universities and summer camps, that kind of thing.
Business is great, apparently. They just bought their first apartment and everything.
” She swiveled to her computer and began clicking through some files.
“Do you want to see pictures from his wedding?”
“Oh—sure.”
“Here we are!” She pulled a selfie up on the screen.
Her face loomed up close, devilish. Above her, the groom wore a distracted smile, like Teacher Sun had accosted him in the hallway right before he walked out to the stage.
I could see what she meant about a weak constitution.
Something about his chin, the way it folded into his neck.
“Was it a nice wedding?”
“Actually, it was sort of awkward. Her parents paid for the wedding. Nice banquet, nice hotel, everything. Something you dress up for, you know? Then his family showed up in shorts and T-shirts. Like they were going to Disneyland. You know Disneyland?”
“Didn’t he tell them it was going to be a nice wedding?”
“I’m sure he did, but, well.” Teacher Sun shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t care? Or maybe they didn’t think it was a real wedding?”
“How did the bride’s family react?”
“Oh, they were saints! Never stopped smiling. In fact—you see this pattern?” She zoomed in on the bride’s mother’s skirt so that I could see the brocade.
Symbols of marital bliss were stitched all over the cloth: phoenixes and dragons and kissing mandarin ducks.
“Custom tailored,” said Teacher Sun. “They had special suits done for the whole family; they really wanted to impress. But then when they saw the groom’s parents had nothing to wear, they literally took the clothes off their backs. Look!”
She clicked through to a family picture.
The bride’s parents, hands clasped and beaming proudly, were dwarfed on either end by two white giants in khaki shorts.
The groom’s parents wore the embroidered suit jackets, which were so small on them that the sleeves barely came down past their elbows.
The bride’s parents exuded such a dignified joy, their chests puffed out, chins lifted.
Each clutched one of their daughter’s arms. Their grip was so tight—even zoomed out, I could see the veins popping in their knuckles.
“No one said anything?” I asked.
“How could they? On her wedding day?”
She clicked again: another selfie, this time with the bride and groom.
I examined the bride’s face. She was a plain, kind-looking girl.
Her face was half hidden by a swoop of schoolgirl bangs.
She reminded me a bit of Jasmine—her evident desire to go unseen.
Had she recognized the slight for what it was?
I wondered. Had she cried after; had she fought with her new husband; had she uttered even a veiled insult to her in-laws; had she regretted the whole thing?
Was she happy now? How did she feel about her baby?
“Do you think they’ll be happy?” I asked.
“Oh yes, he adores her. Things completely turned around for him after he met her. She’s the one who came up with the idea for their business, and she does all the client-facing work.
She saved his life, honestly; I can’t even imagine where he’d be without her.
And their kids will be dual citizens. That’s great.
That means no matter what happens, they’ll have a place to go.
I mean, if the mainland invades—ha ha. Anyway!
” Teacher Sun closed the image files. “What were we supposed to do today?”
“My speech,” I reminded her.
“Right,” she said, and clicked back out into the general folder.
I was amazed at how far down she had to scroll.
There were folders dating back to the 2010s, which meant she had been at this program for over a decade.
I wondered if she would tell any stories about me to future students, if the hot springs hand job would outlive my time in Taipei.
We reached my folder: Chen Li-Li. She clicked open my speech document. Once again, a sea of red. “It’s not bad,” she said. “But I think you are getting sloppy with your particles. Shall we go over again the three uses of de?”
AFTER CLASSES, ANNA AND I TOOK THE GREEN LINE TO THE SONGSHAN stop, walked two blocks, and then roamed around in circles until finally a maintenance worker let us inside a locked residential lobby, then pointed us to the elevator to the third-floor entrance of the Shanghainese restaurant we’d been looking for.
Yale had organized a banquet dinner for all its fellowship recipients in Taiwan that summer.
Present were two professors from the East Asian Studies department; a representative from Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, which had funded our living stipends; and a few older people who, I gathered, were the wealthy alums who had sponsored our tuitions.
Rayer was there, as well as a handful of graduate students who had come to Taiwan on research grants.
I sat between Skipper and Anna. Across the table was JC, who had somehow secured a seat for Margrit, although Margrit was not affiliated with Yale in any way.
There was a floral centerpiece on the table, and when I adjusted my chair, it blocked JC’s face completely.
The representative from the Ministry of Education made a toast congratulating us on our dedication to studying Chinese and maintaining the very special US-Taiwan relationship.
Then we went around the table sharing one experience each of something that had left a lasting impact on us this summer.
We spoke in English; not all the donors were fluent in Chinese.
Rayer talked passionately about some print magazines she had found at the NTU archives, queer student publications that hadn’t been digitized and so were inaccessible from the States.
She would need more grant money to come back and scan them in the fall.
JC said he had liked learning to mold pineapple cakes at the Kuo Yuan Ye Museum of Cake and Pastry.
Skipper told everyone about the boat models in the Evergreen Maritime Museum.
I talked about the acoustics at the National Concert Hall, and the donors all agreed it was an underrated treasure.