Taipei in the 1980s

TAIPEI IS MY FIRST

Taipei is like a first boyfriend. We didn't have a good start, but then we became friends. We were young and naïve, but had a lot of fun together. Then we fell in love. Eventually, we went our separate ways, and we matured a lot over the past few decades. We are far apart, but we still care about each other... and... we are good friends still. Most importantly, we will always be there for each other.

Taipei is like a first boyfriend. We will always be there for each other.

MOVING "BACK"

When we moved back to Taipei, I was 11.. a tween... leaving sunny California for a developing (and sopping, stinky, smoggy) Taipei. We were 'returning' to the place of my birth, 'back' to family and my 'hometown'. We emigrated from Taipei to the US when I was 3, so I really didn't think of Taipei as home.

It was a very confusing time.

We left suburbia Walnut Creek, California, a beautiful home with a huge backyard, to-die-for weather, and friends to bike with. For... a small apartment on the fourth floor of a building. No elevators, no supermarkets, no yard, no garage. Lots of bikes, mopeds, and wet markets where the meat and vegetables were hung or spread out in small alley ways next to stores that sold underwear and socks or ADADAS shoes. And NIKEE shorts. Or PRIMCE tennis racquets.

You could smell the raw meat from blocks away and the ground was always wet. They killed the chicken in front of you and you selected live fish to kill or picked it out freshly cut on ice. Right next to that, you could buy sugar cane juice that was crushed from the long bamboo-like sticks or sugary syrup on ice. Pig's blood in rice on popsicle sticks and stinky tofu.

Apparently I spoke with an American accent and smelled like milk, how Western people smelled, or so said my cousins.

Instead of biking through fields, we took the crazy public buses with the punch card lady hanging out the back with her whistle. Instead of walking through blocks and blocks of sprawling residential streets to get to a strip mall for BR31 ice cream cones, we wove in and out of side streets to the local miscellaneous store to buy milk candy or dried sour plums.

Instead of hot dogs, hamburgers, and pizza, we chomped on hotpots, dumplings, and noodles.

No Halloween. No Christmas. But huge Chinese New Year celebrations with fire crackers.

We left suburbia Walnut Creek, California, a beautiful home with a huge backyard, to-die-for weather, and friends to bike with. For... a small apartment on the fourth floor of a building.

THE HATE PART

I hated it. It was so humid, I was always sweating. And the air was so polluted, a pinky wipe in the nostril got you a soot covered fingertip. A hormone change meant that pimples were developing so getting blackheads from the dirty air was a huge annoyance and a source of shame.

I hated the squat toilets and the footprints on western toilet seats.

If there were 3 lanes painted on the road, there were at least 4 lanes of cars, usually 7, tightly wound up and intertwined, inching forward organically.

Bikes and mopeds were everywhere. Were they vehicles? Were they pedestrians? Who knew? They were EVERYWHERE!

The big block red bricks of the sidewalks were always broken. On rainy days, you had to be very careful where you stepped, because inevitably you'd step on a wonky brick that would shoot water up your leg.

Don't get me started on the buses. No one ever lined up; there was always this milling around. And once you got in, it was always crowded. It got so crowded, that if you lifted a leg up, you had no where to put it back down. The bus drivers drove like they were professional race car drivers. I could have sworn that many a bus were about to flip on its side when we went sharply around corners. Buses didn't go along north-south east-west routes. They winded around, did weird loops, went diagonally through the city. Probably efficient, but so confusing for the newbie bus rider.

They didn't line up at the bank either. You just sort of pushed in with your shoulder and you shoved your bank book under the nose of the teller. Aggressively. Glaring at people didn't help. They would just look back matter-of-factly, like, little girl, you snooze, you lose.

TV was horrible. The acting was bad, there were always captions at the bottom of the screen which I found to be extremely distraction (but later appreciated as a way to improve my Chinese), they dubbed all the US shows so that MacGyver sounded masculine and Chinese, and the background dancers were terrible.

I hated it. It was so humid, I was always sweating.

LIFELONG FRIENDS

They say you make lifelong friends in your adolescence. And Taipei became a friend as I developed my lifelong friends from middle and high school. My friends were culturally and linguistically as confused (flexible?) as I was. They were from all over, but mostly from the US. They also had experience living in North America during the time I did and we bonded over being third culture kids living in Taipei.

We bonded over food.

Initially, it was the lack of Western food or the Chinesized American food, which was very, very annoying. But eventually, we discovered that Taiwan had the best food in the world. Cheap and tasty. You could pretty much sample any type of Chinese food in Taiwan, they did the best regional/provincial foods. Taiwanese food was to die for. Noodles! Buns! Rice! Stinky tofu! {drool}

We bonded over night markets.

We hung out to shop and eat. We talked and wandered and ate. We bought our Duran Duran, A-ha, Phil Collins, and Madonna cassette tapes there. We always had our Sony walkmans and Aiwa earphones. We recorded Chicago's "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" as many times we we could on each side of one tape, so we didn't have to rewind it with a pencil.

We bonded over movies.

We bought tickets where they marked our seats with a red crayon. We stood up for the national anthem and we bought popcorn, sarsaparilla, and dried squid to snack on while Hollywood movies made their way to Taiwan a year after they were released in the U.S. We got annoyed when people laughed at jokes they read from the Chinese at the bottom of the screen, which made us miss hearing the punchline. And we laughed when after we snorted at a joke in radio silence because translation was that bad.

We bonded over being third culture kids. We bonded over food. We bonded over night markets. We bonded over movies.

LEAVING

Graduation from high school was a huge deal. It didn't just mean a transition from high school to university, but also leaving Taipei to study in another country. That was true for pretty much everyone in my class. We were being scattered to the four winds.

Leaving Taiwan meant being away from my parents, my 3 younger sisters, the youngest who was only 8. Leaving Taiwan meant not being with any of my friends. We did a lot of long distance calling and writing. This was before the days of the internet and 24/7 access to computers.

University is where I learned that other people interpreted history differently than we did in Taiwan, that we were all brainwashed in different ways. Mao was a hero according to a roommate's boyfriend. It was all very confusing. Looking back, I realize that I was in a state of fear pretty much all four years, feeling lost and uncertain, trying to be independent but not having a clue of what I was doing.

Every summer I went back 'home' to teach English and make money. The foreigners usually made more because they looked like foreigners, even if they were not native English speakers. I pretended I couldn't speak Chinese, so the parents wouldn't try to transfer their kids out of my class. I taught business English to young professionals who wanted to improve their accents for work.

Taipei was still home, but it wasn't home base anymore and I started making plans to stay in Canada permanently.

Taipei wasn't home base anymore.

MOVING BACK... AGAIN

Graduation from university was supposed to be about adulting. But I was told to move back to Taipei and live at home.

Living in Taipei as a young professional (making a salary and not paying for housing) was fun. My office was on the 22nd floor of the Taipei International Trade Building, next door to the Taipei World Trade Center where they put on all the huge exhibitions.

We went to tea houses (Taipei made the best bubble tea and started a craze that is still around today), karaoke, trade shows, arcades, night markets, night clubs, pubs, hiking trails, shopping malls, restaurants restaurants restaurants everywhere...

Many of my friends from high school returned too. We met up every December when the others returned for a visit. We partied. We ate. We philosophized.

I was told to move back to Taipei.

LEAVING... AGAIN

All good things must come to an end. I plotted to get out of living at home. I knew that trying to move out while still living in Taipei just didn't make sense. So my scheme was to further my studies somewhere I could do a tiny bit of travelling.

For grad school, I went to Leeds, a great base for visiting Edinburgh, Dublin, London, Paris... Then I moved to Hong Kong, a great base for visiting Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Cebu, Bangkok...

For 5 years, I would fly back and forth from Hong Kong to Taipei to visit my family. 2 hours door to door. Now having been in a committed relationship with Toronto for nearly 20 years, I only return for a short 2-week visit to Taipei every couple of years.

My mother used to ask me: "So if Taiwan and Canada got into a war, who would you support?" or "If Taiwan and and Canada were competing in the Olympics, who would you cheer for?"

I always answered "both" but truth be told, it's more complicated than that, because China and the US are a part of the equation too! The US is Canada's best friend, a bit of a bully, but we just have so much in common and we collaborate on a lot. China is Taiwan's sibling, a bit of a bully, but really we share a history and have so much in common and collaborate on a lot. I have lived in the US and two of my three sisters were born in America so are American, as is my Canadian-born sister-in-law and her kids. So I have 7 American nephew and nieces. The US and China are Canada's biggest trading partners. We share the longest border in the world with our Southern cousins. I love American shows. In addition, I am ethnically Chinese. My ancestors are from China. I have many friends and family who live in and/or do business with China. The stability of the US and China is important to me as much as that of Taiwan and Canada.

My mother asked me: "If Taiwan and Canada got into a war, who would you support?" Both!

LOVE FOR TAIPEI

All to say, while our relationship started off a bit rocky, Taipei is still my first love, because I ended up loving Taipei and I still do. But "It's Complicated!" is probably more accurate to describe our relationship.

What everyone needs to know about Taipei: People are incredibly nice. There is a gentle hospitality from every and any host, like at restaurants or tea houses, or just at a friend's house. The food is phenomenal. Local Taiwanese food, international food, cheap vendor food on the street by the bus stop, expensive hotel food, specialized food from the various provinces in China, you name it. The food is phenomenal. People are always experimenting with new ways to make food. You will ALWAYS see a new invention that you had never thought about. And you will like it. Flavours and textures are perfectly balanced. Colours, too, are important. Oh, so good. Prepare to gain at least 10 pounds after each visit to Taipei. The island is gorgeous - everyone MUST visit. The cities are huge and very busy with a lot of history, food, and shopping. The villages are quaint. The mountains are majestic.

Taipei is my first love.

AND NOW... MY LOVE LETTER

Dear Taipei,

You were my first, but I really didn't know what it meant to have a committed relationship. I found you a bit overwhelming. To be honest, I probably didn't have the best of attitudes. I was young and naïve.

Your maturation and growth over the past 50 years is astounding. You have become so thoughtful, well-groomed, and organized. I like that you've kept a lot of your traditional values, but I'm in awe of how much modern technology you've adopted. Your subway system is out of this world, as is your express train.

You are also a lot more open-minded than you were a long time ago. I'm quite shocked at what a long way you've come. In 1996, you became the first Chinese territory to directly democratically elect a President. In 2019, you allowed same-sex marriage and was the first nation in Asia to do so. You did so well during this COVID-19 pandemic.

I'm am so proud of you!

Love,

Sherry