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Missing...
Apr. 16th, 2007 06:40 pmIt may be all the blather I'm hearing these days, but I find myself feeling more 'Chinese' than ever, out of place and awfully nostalgic for my Taiwan days.
Maybe my Jordanian friend was right.
The one that a couple summers ago, seeing I was listening absent-mindedly to her conversation with our Moroccan colleague about going back to their countries for the summer, all of a sudden stared at me and told me:" you are the only one of us that never goes back home".
It wasn't easy, but I miss it. Maybe I just miss being 22 and on my great adventure, traveling alone to a place half a world away, but I see it: the big road in front of the house, with its dry, dusty smell.
And I think back and miss the thermos full of hot water, every night in my room, even if I didn't get into the habit of drinking hot boiled water for a full month.
The almost daily downpours, the euphorbia trees lining the streets, the crazy traffic of scooters and bikes. Getting up at 5 in the morning to catch the first bus to be able to get on time at my taijiquan lesson.
Seeing 'The Monkey King' at the Opera Theater, the sudden sunsets, going out with my schoolmates and teacher Yang, who showed us around.
The quaint old-European coffee shop Sabine took me to, built by a Russian prince escaped to Taiwan after the revolution, hunting for books at the Tunghuang Caves bookstore, the big Koi fish in the gardens of the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial and the weekly trips to the Palace Museum.
The people at the Movie Studios who took pictures of me and Sabine thinking we worked there, the taxi driver who thanked me because "our young people forget who they are, and you come from so far away to learn", the begging monks, statue-still on the pavement, alm-bowl in hand, dressed in black with bamboo hats covering half their faces, father De Raynesse, the white-haired French Jesuit, with his dry wit, great knowledge and the kind eyes.
The owner of the small eatery near the school, who loved to talk and gave you a discount if he liked you, the yellow arrows that, in every building, pointed to the bomb-shelter, the typhoon warnings on TV and how that year, almost on purpose, they came nearer and nearer and swerved away at the last moment.
The city-god's birthday, eating duck made of bean-curd in a taoist monastery, Easter Mass in the Jesuit church and how at the 'Holy, holy, holy' I was expecting to hear the bells but the altar boy set on fire a string of firecrackers instead, almost giving me an heart-attack.
The brilliant blue sky in January that looked almost fake, the young recruits waiting for their turn at the exercises for the double-ten parade who couldn't resist trying out their English with the Western girl, the gentleman on whose lap I fell when the bus braked suddenly, who seeing that I would have liked to disappear looked at me and smiled, commenting " Beautiful!" and the Chinese professor of Latin, home for Christmas from his Canadian school, I debated with. He exalting the logic and precision of Latin and I the richness and subtlety of Chinese.
Taipei noon
from every kitchen
the smell of leeks
Maybe my Jordanian friend was right.
The one that a couple summers ago, seeing I was listening absent-mindedly to her conversation with our Moroccan colleague about going back to their countries for the summer, all of a sudden stared at me and told me:" you are the only one of us that never goes back home".
It wasn't easy, but I miss it. Maybe I just miss being 22 and on my great adventure, traveling alone to a place half a world away, but I see it: the big road in front of the house, with its dry, dusty smell.
And I think back and miss the thermos full of hot water, every night in my room, even if I didn't get into the habit of drinking hot boiled water for a full month.
The almost daily downpours, the euphorbia trees lining the streets, the crazy traffic of scooters and bikes. Getting up at 5 in the morning to catch the first bus to be able to get on time at my taijiquan lesson.
Seeing 'The Monkey King' at the Opera Theater, the sudden sunsets, going out with my schoolmates and teacher Yang, who showed us around.
The quaint old-European coffee shop Sabine took me to, built by a Russian prince escaped to Taiwan after the revolution, hunting for books at the Tunghuang Caves bookstore, the big Koi fish in the gardens of the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial and the weekly trips to the Palace Museum.
The people at the Movie Studios who took pictures of me and Sabine thinking we worked there, the taxi driver who thanked me because "our young people forget who they are, and you come from so far away to learn", the begging monks, statue-still on the pavement, alm-bowl in hand, dressed in black with bamboo hats covering half their faces, father De Raynesse, the white-haired French Jesuit, with his dry wit, great knowledge and the kind eyes.
The owner of the small eatery near the school, who loved to talk and gave you a discount if he liked you, the yellow arrows that, in every building, pointed to the bomb-shelter, the typhoon warnings on TV and how that year, almost on purpose, they came nearer and nearer and swerved away at the last moment.
The city-god's birthday, eating duck made of bean-curd in a taoist monastery, Easter Mass in the Jesuit church and how at the 'Holy, holy, holy' I was expecting to hear the bells but the altar boy set on fire a string of firecrackers instead, almost giving me an heart-attack.
The brilliant blue sky in January that looked almost fake, the young recruits waiting for their turn at the exercises for the double-ten parade who couldn't resist trying out their English with the Western girl, the gentleman on whose lap I fell when the bus braked suddenly, who seeing that I would have liked to disappear looked at me and smiled, commenting " Beautiful!" and the Chinese professor of Latin, home for Christmas from his Canadian school, I debated with. He exalting the logic and precision of Latin and I the richness and subtlety of Chinese.
Taipei noon
from every kitchen
the smell of leeks
