Page 8 of Taipei Story

Women don’t want babies.

Babies are scared—I mean, babies are scary.

The government doesn’t protect them. The government doesn’t protect women.

So of course the population gets older.

But old people need protection too. I mean, health insurance.

The government doesn’t protect them either.

Therefore, aging is very bad.

Thought and Society was going to fix me. By the end of the summer I would be capable of discoursing on public health, the changes in Taiwanese demographics, the pitfalls of Chinese people’s regional attachments, the origins of the Chinese writing system, and the role of the novel in contemporary Chinese society. I would also, finally, know the proper term for “pandemic.”

NEXT I HAD MY FIRST ELECTIVE CLASS, MODERN TAIWANESE LITERATURE with Teacher Lin. Teacher Lin was the youngest and prettiest instructor on the faculty. Many of the year-round students were infatuated with her, and they kept flirting with her in the hallway during the ten-minute break between classes. I wondered what it was like to be flirted with by people who were bad at your language. I this weekend discovered a secret. Yes—a café for cats! Do you like as well, the cats?

There were only two other students taking Modern Taiwanese Literature. Meijuan was from Myanmar, and she spoke Mandarin with a pert, precise accent. She was a medical student—all her siblings were doctors—but she was taking a break from her degree to improve her Chinese. She gave some explanation for why fluency in Chinese helped you as a doctor in Myanmar, but I couldn’t understand it.

Shuya was a graduate student at UCLA. I was convinced Shuya was Russian. He didn’t have a Russian accent or anything; I just assumed that Shuya was a Sinicization of Shulya, which I imagined was a Russian or at least a Slavic name. I had read The Brothers Karamazov on my flight to Taipei, so in my head all these associations were natural ones to make. Also, Shuya had a dour resting face, and he spoke with a slow, profound affect. What could be more Russian than that? Later, in the student lounge, I found out that his English name was Nathan, and that he was from Wyoming. I felt betrayed. Who had named him Shuya?

ANNA AND I DIDN’T HAVE THE SAME LUNCH BREAK, BUT I WAS EXCITED to venture out alone. I knew that just north of campus, across the main road, were several streets lined with lunch spots popular with Taiwanese students. I had looked up several and settled on an onigiri shack that had lots of good reviews. I’d found the menu—chalk characters on a blackboard—by zooming in on one of the photos. I had looked up the characters and knew how to pronounce the words for tuna onigiri and grilled salmon onigiri. I had the correct change in my pocket; I wanted the exchange to be seamless. But the onigiri shack was not there. I stopped where the dot on my phone indicated it should be, and all I saw was a brick wall. The most recent review I could find was from three days ago. So it was unlikely this shack had suddenly closed down. Maybe it was only open on certain days of the week. But there was not even an empty storefront with a Closed sign. There was nothing that indicated an onigiri shack had ever existed on this spot.

I walked back and forth on the street, glaring at empty space. I felt utterly defeated. The stakes were not high—I did not want onigiri that much—but right then, I’d lost any confidence in my ability to process external information. I felt I was losing my grip on reality. The internet had promised this shack would be there, and it was not.

It was blindingly hot outside. My neck was slick with sweat. I should have just picked a restaurant, any restaurant, and gone inside, but I couldn’t stop pacing. I had to resolve this glitch. So this was how hikers went missing and died of heatstroke just yards from the trail. Your mind went little by little, and then you just made worse and worse decisions until you died.

“Hey, Lily!”

It was JC. We had spent all weekend together, but still I was surprised he knew my name. We had never conversed directly—he was always speaking to Skipper, or Devin, or Belinda, or all of us at once. This was the first time we had looked each other in the eyes.

“I think maybe no one else has this lunch break,” he said. “Where were you headed?”

“I’m having trouble deciding,” I said.

“I can see that,” said JC. “I saw you across the street. You’ve been swiveling your head back and forth for like a full minute.”

I explained about the onigiri place and the Google Maps reviews.

“Huh,” said JC. “That is weird. But I’m really hungry. Does it have to be onigiri?”

We decided I was overthinking it. There were about sixty more lunches to go before we left Taipei. If we had a bad lunch today, then we could try again tomorrow. We could afford to waste a meal. We walked into the first place around the corner, which turned out to be wonderful: a Hainanese chicken rice joint, which served an option of three different cuts of tender steamed meat over yellow rice cooked in broth.

We ordered the set lunches, which came with iced tea. I sat beneath an AC vent, relishing the air against my neck. Slowly my mind flickered back to life, and I took stock of my present situation.

Here I was, with the famous JC. Now what? Such a vast information asymmetry lay between us. JC knew almost nothing about me. But I had seen multiple YouTube videos of his mother, watched all of his sister’s TikToks, and read a Time profile wherein a toddler JC counted to ten and back in French, to a reporter’s delight. I knew that JC lived in Davenport and was, last spring, romantically attached to a recently retired Olympian figure skater. And here I was in my shapeless smock, makeup free, cheeks burning, dripping with sweat. Why should he care what I had to say?

Fortunately JC was happy to carry the conversation. He didn’t mind talking at length about himself. I just had to ask some guiding questions, and off he went. His day was going all right so far. Thought and Society had too much homework, but he was excited about his morning elective. The whole class was structured around discussing episodes from a period drama called A Touch of Green, which was based on a novella by the Taiwanese writer Bai Xianyong. It was about the wives of Chinese air force fighter pilots during World War II. “It’s really sad,” he said. “We’re only in the first episode, so we’re just meeting the main characters. It’s really cute. There’s this one hotshot pilot, and he’s fallen in love with this shy wallflower girl. But you know it’s going to be tragic—I mean, the music is just giving a tragic vibe.”

I asked if he had read the novella, and he said he was trying to avoid spoilers. But it was a World War II drama, after all. He predicted that the pilot, and probably his girlfriend too, would die in a plane crash, or in a shootout with the Japanese.

JC smelled good. I was shocked to discover this. I had never considered that boyish sweat could be a good smell, but sitting there I felt an intense pull toward the wet spot at the small of his back. I wanted to bury my face in it. I felt dizzy. I lowered my fork; suddenly I had no appetite. What was happening to me?

“Shoot.” JC checked his watch. “Sorry, I’m supposed to call my mom.”

“Oh—okay, no worries.”

“This was great, though.” He gathered up his things and pushed toward the door, waving over his shoulder. “We’ll try the ramen place tomorrow? Meet in the lobby?”