Motherland
Sunday, July 08, 2007
As of this morning, we’ve been in Taiwan exactly one week. My Mandarin has improved noticeably, though my tolerance to heat and humidity has not. Yesterday, Dave and I came up to Taipei. That felt more like a homecoming to me than going to Taichung (about 2 hours south by car) and staying at Dave’s old house where I’d never been before. Taipei is where I’d always stay when I came as a kid, and it has an even fonder place in my heart after the summer of ’99 when I interned at the Taipei World Trade Center for 10 weeks and really lived here – as in, took the bus to work, found my own way around with a well-creased street map with no English, attended a church with other ABC’s, and ventured out to nightmarkets on my own. It was thrilling to see the same streets and buildings, especially my parents’ alma mater, National Taiwan University (the “Harvard” of Taiwan).
Yesterday was a whirlwind of seeing my side of the family and family friends, and today will be more of the same. It’s a cramped scheduled with only two days in Taipei, but for me it will be the highlight of this trip. I felt more relaxed around the familiar faces and not being the one under scrutiny (as much, anyway), since this is the first time my aunts, uncles, cousins, and godparents have met Dave. They asked him a lot of questions, naturally, about his family, how he grew up, his education, and current plans. He handled it just fine. The funniest part was during lunch with my parents’ college friends at a Japanese restaurant. One of the women asked Dave and me to tell the story of how we met. I’d never told the story in Mandarin before and I was nervous, but my godmother told me to see it as speaking practice. So, I told them how I liked Dave first after we met in Pathfinder (our college Christian fellowship) because he was goodlooking and Taiwanese and spoke perfect Mandarin and English. I would find excuses to see him and talk to him, like pretending to need help with Chinese or O-Chem homework (well, I wasn’t pretending with O-Chem), or pretending to need to see his roommate for something. (My parents’ college friends thought this was hilarious and bold of me to admit to my dual motives.) After a few months of this, and Dave not realizing at all, one of his obnoxious friends tipped him off and after that he was so embarrassed he wouldn’t talk to me. That was hurtful of course, but I still liked him. Then a couple months after that, an older sister in Christ talked some sense into him and he started acting more normal around me. Then we went ice skating (eliciting some “awwww”‘s) where I linked my arm in his and skated with him, after which he, the worse skater by far, promptly fell and pulled me down on the ice with him. As I was recovering from the shock to my tailbone, Dave would tell me later, he realized he liked me. At this point in the story, Dave corrected me and said he realized he liked me when I took his hand before we fell. (Actually, there wasn’t much of a time difference…)
Then, since I’d been doing all the talking, they put the onus on Dave and asked him what he likes most about me. He said something in Mandarin that best translates as “naivete” or “childlike innocence.” They laughed and said, what about “simple and pure” (another Chinese phrase that has no exact translation)? Dave agreed.
Telling our story made me think, my other Taiwanese relatives have never asked how we started dating or what we like about each other. In fact, a lot of the relationships are somewhat superficial. It’s comfortable and safe not to venture into each others’ emotional wellbeing, but sometimes I sense an unrest and pain beneath the pleasant countenance.
Anyway, on that note, I’m going out for another day in the city!