Sometimes, sometimes I love Taiwan. It is a fierce love, a protective, motherly love. It feels like my place and I am loyal to it. As I hike the stairs of Yangminshan after school, I take it all in: the fresh air, the haze of pollution settling on the valley of Taipei below, the sight of the tree monkey scrambling up a branch at my footsteps, the enormous red and black centipede I almost step on, the Taiwanese people I pass wiping their brows with handkerchiefs and carrying umbrellas to be used in both the rain and the sunshine.
Taipei is in the details. Anything can happen here in this conservative, frugal, thoughtful, bizarre, paradoxical place.
Yesterday, plagued with an unrelenting headache, I bowed out of yoga and headed to my local health food store, hoping that some vegetables might help. I haven’t shopped in weeks, and I barely had the energy to buy food, let alone cook it. Lettuce it was. Tear some up and throw balsamic on: instant dinner. Dropping my purchases onto the rough, sticky counter, I looked around for some tahini sauce. Not finding any, I attempted to ask the owner if they carried tahini by using a pathetic mixture of my Chinese and English. It was reminiscent of high school French where we used to string together sentences like, J’aime le soleil et the beach. It just about killed our teacher; Franglais we called it.
My Chinglish was not any better and she had no idea what I was asking. Fortunately another customer overheard us and in very good English told me that they didn’t have that; in fact, she had no idea what tahini really was. After about 5 minutes of me trying to explain it and the customer – Vivian, I had learned her name was – telling the owner what I said, we were no further to solving the mystery.
Giving up on the tahini, we chatted about a variety of other things. Half an hour later, I had learned Vivian’s husbands name (“You can call him Mr. Kao”), where the owner liked to travel in China, what is good for a unhappy stomach (mine), why everyone should drink pumpkin oat milk (it is good), and when Vivian was going to be cooking me some special corn thing that she said would help my unhappy tummy.
My headache was almost gone, I had practiced some of my Chinese, and I got to meet two really interesting people.
I know this kind of stuff can happen anywhere. And it does. But only in Taiwan have I found people not only genuinely kind, but also willing to go out of their way all the time. It really is an amazing country.
my friend, Sophie, one of the kindest, most generous and thoughtful Taiwanese people I know
