Page 61 of Taipei Story

The world swung to the right. The Communist dictators stepped down or were deposed; their agrarian utopias would never come to pass. China opened its markets and invited the world in. All his neighbors were starting businesses: electronics shops, sneaker stores. Pig farmers became millionaires. Those were the golden years. Dreams had currency again. When the borders relaxed, he felt like he’d won. He had been right after all, to hold on to his hand, to insist on riding it out. The madness could not last forever. Things had to revert to the mean. All three of his daughters went off to college, and then all three found good jobs, and husbands with even better jobs. They purchased homes. They showed him the running water, electricity, the porcelain toilet seats—bidets, imported from Japan, so much more hygienic, just press this button to make it stop. Still vivid the memory of the famine years, and now they didn’t blink at banquet dinners at Sky No. 1—a restaurant where you could reserve a private room in a skyscraper high over a developing Guangzhou. The waiters brought tender chicken over mushrooms, honey-glazed short ribs, steamed shrimp upon beds of vermicelli. His stomach hurt. He said he wanted yams, and twenty minutes later the chef sent up a plate of intricately carved taro, cassava, and Japanese sweet potato; half were steamed, the other half sautéed with crystallized brown sugar. Old people prefer the simple food, joked the waitress. She took a photo for them, showed him the phone, and he was stunned by this vision: the patriarch, the matriarch, surrounded by plump, well-fed daughters. Are we royalty? he asked, and they laughed; Ba, everyone eats like this now.

His youngest daughter off to Los Angeles, and then off to UC Irvine, where she married the first engineering student from China she met. They followed his work to Massachusetts, and they bought a house with multiple bedrooms and a front yard where he could plant apple trees and trust they’d stay long enough to see the harvest. Space was different here in the suburbs. There was no bus, there was no sidewalk, you had to drive just to get some fruit for the mornings, but he had never learned how. It was so quiet. No neighbors peeping out their windows; no washing lines strung up between buildings. This was the land of individual freedoms. Every man on his island, and if someone stood on your sidewalk, said his daughter, you were allowed to shoot them.

They expected him to stay. Everyone wanted to go to America, set down anchors for the chain; everyone got a green card, became naturalized, got a job and a retirement account, and then brought their parents over as well. But he didn’t like relying on others. He liked knowing every face on the block, and he liked being able to walk out his own front door and know exactly where he would end up, and when his son-in-law asked him quietly if they might talk, it was a relief.

See you soon. Not that soon. They were too busy to visit, the flight too long. When the girls did come, they asked constantly how many days were left before they could go. They were impatient with this land of squatting toilets, uncertain Wi-Fi, the lack of air-conditioning. They wanted the Nintendo, they were upset about missing a birthday party, they didn’t like the food their popo cooked at home: the way she tossed everything into the steamer for breakfast, eggs and pork buns and slices of bread alike. Too soggy, they complained. Who puts sandwich bread in a steamer? Let’s have a proper dinner, said his daughter, and off they went, again to Sky No. 1. The girls did not care for the view. Too much smog, they said; you can’t see anything. They whined that the orange juice tasted funny and shuddered at the pickled chicken’s feet and cold sliced tripe, and did not know to pour tea for their elders, and did not take seconds when urged. He looked at them and tried to feel proud. Chatty, chubby foreigners. They were happy, but they were not his.

He rode in the car with them to Baiyun International Airport and waited with them in line to check their bags. When do we take off? the girls kept asking. How long is the flight?

It’s always good to see you, he told his daughter. Come home soon. She met his eyes, weary. Yes, soon—but it was not a promise so much as a deferral.

She didn’t like China. She found it more foreign every time. Her Cantonese faltered; she never had occasion to use it anymore. She hated the smog, the taxis. She thought the food was dirty; she didn’t let her daughters purchase sweet potatoes from street hawkers. The crowds made her nervous. Too many people in this country, and she didn’t like how they looked at her on the street—this woman with three children, at a time when most were given permission to have only one. Who had she bribed? Once, visibly pregnant with the youngest, walking with the other two hand in hand, she’d been stopped at a crosswalk by a police officer, and she’d had to fish her American passport out of her purse before he let her go.

Twelve hours later she texted: landed safely, we’re home.

Impossible now to find a time when the whole family could make the trip. Work was unsteady for his son-in-law; he lived in terror of being let go, and he couldn’t take the time off. All three girls were in school, so nine months of the year were out, and when they were on break, the girls had summer camps, or sleepovers. It’s not fair, they protested. They couldn’t agree on anything else, but on this alone they put up a united front: Why do we have to spend all our breaks in China?

Maybe next summer, said his daughter; and then the summer after that, and then it was a meaningless refrain. Nobody’s fault. The separation had been a long time coming. He knew he’d lost her. He had lost her the day he decided to give her away, as if children were interchangeable, as if one could make up for two, and it made no difference that it had been her lifelong dream to leave.

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?”