Formosa
When Portuguese Sailors first saw Taiwan in the 16th century, they called it Formosa, which means “beautiful island.” The name stuck and it’s been used to refer to Taiwan ever since, it’s also what Taiwan is to me and many other Taiwanese.
I’m writing this post as both a glimpse into the country I love and have called home, and as an ode to the influence it has had on me thus far as I steel myself to temporarily leave it for a few years. I thought it only fitting that I write a post in its memory.
What makes Taiwan so pretty? Why is it so special to me? Partly its the people who are so warm and kind which I realize is what everyone says about their country. The idiosyncratic culture of Taiwan and the people are difficult to capture in words. So instead let me tell you a bit of the environment that shapes us. It’s the rolling rice paddies, soaring mountains, and dense cities; it’s the packed night markets selling bizarre foods, small local food shops, and bento shops; it’s the dense metro lines, high speed rails, abundant communal bikes; it’s the everywhere 7-11s, boba shops, and grocery stores; its the efficient bureaucracy, kind workers, National Health Insurance; it’s the zipping scooters, yellow cabs, small rickshaw trucks; it’s the stunning gorges, huge “god” trees, beautiful beaches; it’s the ornate temples, ginormous buddha statues, festival deity processions. It’s all of these things. And I’m going to miss it dearly.
To be fair, Taiwan has its fair share of problems–housing prices, ugly concrete jungles, inverted population pyramid, less opportunities just to name a few. But to be honest I struggled to even list these, which while are definitively massive social problems that we need to tackle, are somewhat tame problems compared to other nations. It feels closest to an utopian liberal democracy than anything I’ve seen in the West.
I’ve somehow slipped back into the mindset of not being able to imagine what it was like to not live in Taiwan anymore. It was only recently as I near the day I fly away that it suddenly hit me with more force than I expected that I’m once again leaving. I thought I was done with that. I thought I was an adult and my road had forked from my family when I left for university. On some levels that is true, I normally had panic attacks about moving much earlier than this.
As the clock ticks down, I start thinking what do I want to try before I leave. I think of how much older and bigger my younger cousin will be when I get back. He’s currently a toddler running around the courtyard everyday. When I’m back he’ll be in elementary school. I’m scared to think how my grandparents will be in three years. It’s given me a heightened awareness of the unrelenting steady passage of time around me.
When I was jogging, I was startled to realize that I may actually also never stay in Taiwan for continuously more than a month again. Even when my parents move back in a few years, my trips back may be few and far between as I build my own life and have my own list of commitments. I do nevertheless harbor hope that some time in the future my fate will cross paths with this island again and after taking so much from this island that has been so ready to give, that I can give back to it in a meaningful way.
Yet I’m already In many ways a product of Taiwanese society. I received a local education while in elementary school and always went to a public school while in Taiwan. Even my high school, which was a bilingual international school, was a public school. For many years I would’ve said I’m just Taiwanese. My internal monologues were in Mandarin, my value system broadly aligned, my world model predominately of the island. Now it’s more complicated. My spirituality and my taste are still decidedly Taiwanese. But my worldview is now broader and my ambitions larger than what the island can hold for me.
As this chapter closes, the next one’s ready to blossom. Thank you Taiwan for the last 4 years and the many more before that. This is forever one of my many homes and I’m proud to say I’m Taiwanese.