Page 59 of Taipei Story

WE DECIDED TO WATCH A TAIWANESE SHOW CALLED WAVE MAKERS.

It was a fictional drama about young political aides working on a campaign before a big election. The main theme was sexual harassment in Taiwanese politics. The protagonist, a recent graduate who had been harassed by the opposition party’s candidate, her former professor, was played by an actress named Gingle Wang. I found her very compelling.

“That makes sense,” said Anna. “She’s pretty in that way you like.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean her face is always stuck in this expression, like someone just yelled at her, and she’s pouting, and now you have to protect her.” Anna pointed to the screen, where Gingle was pouting at that very moment. “Sorry, but it’s really annoying.”

“She’s pouting because she’s upset!”

“Well yes, but you get the sense that she does it habitually. Like, for attention.” Anna was scrolling through Gingle Wang’s Wikipedia page. “I just think she has very thin lips. Don’t you think her lips are too thin?”

I had not paid much thought to Gingle Wang’s lips, but now that Anna pointed it out, I couldn’t unsee it. We tried another episode, but Anna could bear only so much of Gingle Wang’s shrinking affect, and so we switched to a Taiwanese film: Marry My Dead Body, a comedy about a homophobic cop who accidentally winds up married to the ghost of a gay man. Gingle Wang was in this film too, but she did less pouting, and her part was not big enough to bother Anna. The film was primarily about the (formerly) homophobic cop and the gay ghost teaming up to fight crime.

We were both falling asleep by the final act. I felt Anna drooping against my shoulder, but I didn’t want to wake her up. For once, I didn’t mind the slow passage of time. I understood now the pleasure of storms. They made any shelter feel more precious. Outside, the hammering winds, the roaring rains. Such precarious safety within these four walls. I liked this scene; I tried to commit its details to memory. The quivering candle. The hot, spicy broth settling in my stomach, and Anna’s soft, steady breathing.

TEACHER LIN WAS RIGHT. THE STORM WAS BARELY A STORM; IT passed after a few hours of rainfall, and the next morning, the skies were clear. At two in the morning, the department sent an email announcing that classes were not canceled for the rest of the week after all. The final presentations proceeded as scheduled.

Each Thought and Society class was to present as a panel: We would sit at a long table at the front of the room and deliver our speeches one after another. We weren’t required to listen to other classes’ presentations, but many students stayed to watch their friends. The lecture room was packed. Students kept trickling in, but there was only standing room at the back.

I went last. I had finished writing my essay only the night before, and I had stayed up late committing it to memory. I used the most difficult phrases as mnemonics, stepping-stones I had carved into my brain: linguistic determinism (語言決定論), the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (薩丕爾-沃爾夫假說), conceptual metaphor (概念比喻). I only had to nail these terms. Everything else was linking material. I talked about how some cultures had richer vocabularies for describing color or taste than others, and how this correlated with a more discerning palate for both. I talked about how learning other languages couldn’t help us see the future, but how languages did map space differently onto time. In English, for instance, the future lay before you. In Chinese, the future lay behind. The phrase for future generations—後代—used the same 後 as “behind.” I told everyone what Teacher Sun had told me: that the Chinese believed you could see the past, but you could only walk blindly backward into the future.

I told them my theory that speaking different languages altered not only our perceptions of the world but also our understandings of ourselves. I made a joke—“Some of our classmates seem to become entirely different people when they ascend from the second floor to the third!”—and all the teachers chuckled. I had two paragraphs to go; I was nearly finished.

“I have always been ashamed of my Chinese self,” I said. “She was too young, too immature, too inarticulate. Basically, she was an idiot. I wanted to keep her hidden inside classrooms—inside a safe learning space—until she had caught up to me, until she wouldn’t embarrass herself by opening her mouth. But as time went on, the gap between my two selves never got any smaller, and I was so ashamed, I didn’t let her speak until it was too late.

“My grandfather—that is, my grandfather recently passed away.” I had practiced this transition a dozen times, yet I could not help the hiccup. “And this really affected me, because I always felt that the purpose of language learning was to communicate with another person. Learning Chinese was about access. I wanted to talk to my family—that was the entire point. But now I’m wondering: What happens when you’re late to the conversation? What does Chinese do for you then? I wanted to wait until I became a person he could really converse with. But I wasn’t fast enough. All I have now are questions, but at least I have learned to phrase them in his terms. I can move through the world with his language, at least a little. That will have to be enough. Um.” I cleared my throat. “So that’s my speech. Thank you, everyone.”

The room was very still when I finished. It was not the impressed kind of silence. Someone was supposed to ask me a question now, but no one raised their hand. I wished I had just spoken about foreign direct investment in China, or diet and exercise culture among youths in America. Some of the teachers leaned forward, eyebrows raised, as if they were concerned I was about to cry. I had never gotten over that embarrassing instinct that if someone was Chinese, they must be related to me. And I understood I couldn’t treat my teachers like they were my parents, that it was unfair and racially suspect. But just then, I did feel a sheltering kindness in the room.

Teacher Sun raised her hand.

I pointed to her. “Yes?”

“So what would you ask him?”

“Sorry?”

“If you could have that last conversation with your gonggong right now.” She beamed. “What would you ask him?”

Interstitial

Tell me about your parents.

Dainty, right? Is dainty the word?

How did they tell you they were sending you back?

Did it feel like a foreign country?

In what way did it feel like yours?

How was your Mandarin?

How long did it take you to learn?

Who did you like to read?