Category: Family

Grandfather’s Office

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Every morning up until the month before he passed away, my grandfather went to the office with his two sons. For thirty years or so his official title was company president, his presence necessary at all company meetings and his opinion of utmost importance when it came to decision making, but sometime around his ninetieth birthday he decided to take a step back and let his sons take the reigns. He was still the man who signed the checks, an activity he delighted in, but he shortened his working day to four hours, eight to noon, when he would leave for lunch. As the years wore on, his “duties” became a lightweight medley of newspaper reading and reorganizing the whirligigs on his desk and matching lottery numbers. From time to time he would emerge from his office to see what his sons were up to, and they would look up from whatever they were working on to nod kindly at him.

Often, he would tap on his middle son’s window and ask how the stock market was doing.
“It’s doing fine, Father,” his middle son would say, “Just fine.” And my grandfather would nod and shuffle along, a stooped figure gliding past the glass.

It is good fortune, the Chinese say, to be emotionally close to one’s family and even greater fortune to be physically close. Ask any elderly Chinese what it is they want most and most likely, they will say, “To have my children all around me.” My grandfather was blessed by living in the same building as two of his sons and their families, and doubly so in that he worked with them as well, without incident. My grandfather’s sons were the light of his life, the company they had built together a great source of pride. That his sons respected him is an understatement – they showered him with love and adoration, but of the quiet type. There was never any fawning, only a steady stream of support and acquiescence for whatever it is the father wanted to do.

It seems silly to point this out, but they let grandfather have the biggest room. That expansive back office with long windows overlooking the neighboring airport.

 Once, when I went with grandma to pick grandpa up for lunch, I found him dressed and ready to leave, standing before the window, watching the planes take off.
“He likes to do that,” my uncle told me.

When my grandfather passed away, there was no question as to whether the room would be cleaned out for either uncle – it wouldn’t. His sons would leave it just as it was. Visited the office last week, I found it unchanged since the last time I went to pick grandfather up for lunch. The room was slightly colder, but clean and orderly, with the desk chair pushed back and a pen left uncapped on the desk, as though grandfather had left briefly and would be returning any moment.

 

I examined his things, though I had seen them all before. It was like rereading a favorite book.
My grandfather was a shameless collector of cheap toys.

And clocks, of any type.

His shelves were  decorated with gifts from friends, including this stone rooster, complete with pebble grains. My grandfather was born in the year of the Rooster, as was my brother, my grandmother, and two aunts.

Behind a small table set from the seventies, a collection of Chinese paintings, also gifts from friends and business partners.

There were also many mirrors to be found, as even more than airplanes my grandfather loved to look at himself.

In the small wardrobe, a large safe, a crisp white shirt and a portrait of his father. Once, while helping my grandfather with his coat, he saw me looking at the photograph. He smiled and slowly lifted his hand up to point at the picture; he was nearing one hundred years old then. “My father,” he said, “my father.” Fittingly, in each of my uncle’s offices, there are portraits of their father.

And on the adjacent shelves, more recent photographs:

From a company/family outing with the office ladies and grandchildren.
With Grandma on the left (peeling shrimp for Grandpa), Betty and Grandpa at one of many restaurants, circa 2007.

In the Company of Single Women

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Forty-six years ago, my grandfather retired from his position as a customs officer and with fortune’s second wind, established a small company, the workings of which to this day, remain somewhat of a mystery to me. I once asked my second uncle what it was the company did. Looking up briefly from his computer screen which, as usual, was covered with blinking red and green numbers, he shrugged and said, “I know what I do for the company, but other people, I’m not quite sure. A smattering of things, I guess.” 

First Uncle Kwang-Hong, the middle brother, in his office.

At its inception it was a medical supply trading company and only later, with my grandmother’s death, began its foray into real estate development. She had wisely bought random parcels of land throughout Taipei, leaving it to her sons who in turned built office buildings and tall condominiums upon it when they were grown and joined the company’s ranks.

Project drawings from the company’s heyday.

Why, people ask the children in our family, don’t we just “take over” the family business? It was and remains modestly successful and, were we to infuse it with youthful innovations, surely it could rise to become even greater?

Where important meetings once took place, old files and boxes of supplies pile up.

Fat chance, we reply, not least because the office exudes a musty smell and a blanketed quiet – all signs of a company in decline. The boys are off hunting bigger fish (i.e. companies that occupy more than just a single floor) and the girls, well, we can’t help but think of all the office ladies who in the company’s heyday, were still pretty young blossoms waiting to be plucked from white collar obscurity. Now however, they are old maids. Family lore has it thus: if you are a single woman entering the company’ work force then you will leave a single woman. It’s the company curse, and a notably sexist one at that. Men who work at the company will eventually find themselves happily married to wonderful wives who bear even more wonderful children (case in point: me). This is precisely what happened to my grandpa, uncles and father and a smattering of other men who have come and gone. Women however, risk an eternity of spinsterhood. 

Doomed.

Of the six women who have begun their careers with us, only one is married, and this occurred prior to her employment. The other five have given up looking for love, it seems, though I can’t say for sure. I doubt women ever stop looking. They dress up to come to work, though there are no men to impress but my two married uncles, one of whom is almost hermit-like. The company’s one man financial analyst, he closes the office door each morning, hiding behind four giant computer screens until lunchtime, when he steams his home-packed lunch, inhales it, then settles in for a nap. He rarely speaks to anyone, bidding only good morning and good night to the office ladies.

An artist at work.

 My other uncle, my father’s youngest brother, is a bit of a workaholic. When he is kind he is very kind, but when he is angry, the entire office cowers beneath his oppressive anger. The women fear him, but they also cannot leave him. It is a strange dynamic, one that puzzles me to no end.

The only photograph in Second Uncle Kwang-Hwa’s office: a somewhat cruel reminder to all the office ladies who enter that while they may not like him very much, there is someone at home who does, very much.

But I have written it off as one of those karmic enigmas – perhaps in another life these women betrayed my uncle in some way so that now, they’re repaying him with their allegiance.

Speaking of Karma, the company has its own altar room. Perhaps the office ladies don’t use it enough.

Every time I visit the office and see these women, some still quite young looking (though I feel this has more to do with a mental projection of their reluctance to leave a certain stage of life than with any skincare regime), I wonder, “Why don’t they leave? Why don’t they quit?” It’s a depressing sight, but I can only keep this to myself or speak in whispers, to my cousin who feels the same way.

We can fear them right now because we are young.

But who knows, one day we may know exactly how they feel when a young woman on the cusp of career or love or both, walks into the room. Or perhaps it’s just my superstitions talking. In companies all over the world (though it seems most visibly in Asia) women are trading job security for marriage. They work late hours, making it hard to socialize after work, and when the weekends come, they have barely any energy leftover to meet new people not to mention spend time with friends and family. Men go through the same thing too, but the alarmingly imbalanced ratio of women to men (the article is for Hong Kong, but Taiwan’s numbers are not too different) means that men can be far less proactive and still, some grateful young woman is likely to fall in his lap.

Regardless, I’ve vowed to never seek employment in the family business. In medical equipment and real estate, the company has made a comfortable living for all those associated. Where it has no business is Love. At least not for the office ladies.

上海人 (下） Shanghai People Part 2

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More than anything else, Shanghai is an attitude. But this post is incomplete because I often only thought to photograph people when it was too late – they had walked by, the moment passed, or it would have just been plain creepy for me to do so.

I use a small camera, not the kind that lends me much credibility as a photographer and thus am often turned down when I ask to photograph a subject. They assume, I presume, that I’m keeping their photos for a giant psycho-sexual voodoo collection. Which is true. But no, I’m joking. It lends me even less credibility when I say, “It’s for my blog.” or in China, “Boo-luo-guh.” So I have to be discreet, feeling half triumphant and half villainous, leery pervert- when I do snap a photo of someone without their knowledge… or sometimes, with them staring straight at me:

Arguably the best place to read the Sunday paper.

 What I’ve noticed though, is that laborers really don’t give a damn if you take their picture. They might give you a strange look here and there, but moving to the city (most laborers are not from Shanghai but from the countryside) has made them develop a thick skin to protect them from the sorts of evil only a big city can bring out in people  – what’s one young woman with a camera?

But for the most part, life is good. Hard, but good, with pockets of rest and gossip in between shifts:

After each day the brooms are fed to pandas. Just kidding. But seriously, these brooms work better than the ones with bristles.

And the shift itself, which depending on the restaurant, flies by because of the sheer volume of people you must work to feed:

A different kind of sweatshop at Xiao3 Yang2 Shen1 Jian1.

 Some people make a living – and friends- fixing the darnedest things, living by an old code: “Why throw it away when you can fix it?” The economy of it amuses and inspires me: 

A pot mender. His shoes however, are quite new.

 There is the calm before the storm:

A small hole in the wall thirty minutes before noon.

And then the storm itself:

Lunchtime.
The crowd only grew, as did our curiosity and appetite. We must have that rice! 

 And if one is not Shanghainese by birth, there is the process of becoming naturalized, by force. My cousin successfully shoved her way to the front of the crowd and seized one of the last few bowls of fragrant rice.

SUCCESS!

 A good day for the rice vendor; bad day for the dish washer. 

All around us, Shanghai.

上海人 (上） Shanghai People Part 1

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In 2006, I went to Shanghai with this man:

Grandpa Ho in Shanghai’s Park Hotel, aged 97.

Shanghai was his town. He wore it on his sleeve, in his breast pocket, on his tie. You could see Shanghai reflected in his smooth shiny forehead and carefully polished shoes. You could smell it in the lanolin of his neatly combed hair. He passed away two years ago in Taipei, but up until the very end he traveled back to his hometown at least twice a year. We say he went to see his daughters, but in truth, it was to refresh his lifeblood. A city can do that for you.

Some twenty-nine years ago my brother Howard was born in Taipei and five years after that, I came along. Technically, for those who care, we are Taiwanese. Our parents were born in Taipei, where their parents had come to during the Cultural Revolution (and at the mention of this, we are supposed to frown at China and at Communism). We are more familiar with Taiwanese customs and cultures than we are with China’s. We spent months here every summer and some winters too. My brother lived in Taipei until he was five and I, if one were to add up the dates of entries and departure stamps in my passport, have probably spent the same amount of time, if not more. And yet we say we are Shanghainese. We say we are “people from outside of Taiwan” (外省人 wai4 sheng3 ren2) and when people ask “Where?” We say proudly, “Shanghai. We are from Shanghai.” Such is the custom.

If life is about symmetry, or about fulfillment of some unspoken duty, then it would appear that someone in our family, a clan so inwardly Shanghainese despite being so outwardly Taiwanese (and American, for that matter), would inevitably go back to where it supposedly all began. But when my grandfather was interred after a very distinctly Taiwanese funeral, a strange thought invaded our collective conscience:  Were we still Shanghainese? Could we really say we were when the only man in our family to have been born there was now buried in Taiwanese soil?

Sure we have relatives in Shanghai, but they were more like vaguely familiar acquaintances, a jumble of smiling faces with titles like “second great aunt” and “third cousin twice removed.” We mulled over this for two years. My uncle, who had done a little business in Shanghai before, closed shop and thought about selling the small house he had bought there. In the meantime my brother went off to graduate school to complete an MBA. Upon graduation, he put on his resume, “Speaks Mandarin,” and a smattering of other details that caught the eye of a man who put him in touch with another man. He was interviewed. Weeks went by. Then months. And for a while it seemed as though my brother would be employed, if at all, by an American company, not too far away from home in Orange County, California. Then seven months after graduating, he got the call. Would he relocate to Shanghai?

“Of course,” he said with confidence, and after a brief moment, a wavering identity was restored: “I am, after all, Shanghainese.”

From now on, I will go to Shanghai to see this man (on the left):

Brother Howard with cousin Karen, aboard Shanghai Metro.

A Kitchen in Shanghai

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I arrived in Shanghai late Thursday night at the wrong airport. My brother, uncle and cousin had already made the hour and a half drive to Pudong International Airport, where I was scheduled to land but which, due to fog, had been closed. My flight was redirected to Hong Qiao Airport midflight and when the announcement was made, the handsome Australian man in front of me turned around and away from his newspaper (incidentally, he was reading this article) and asked, “What just happened?”

Luckily two terse but nice Shanghai men in my row (two friends on their way home from a week of gambling in Macau) were kind enough to lend me a cell phone so I could call my brother with the wonderful news that yes, he had in fact, just spent an hour and a half driving to the wrong airport. Thankfully for me, Hong Qiao is oodles closer to “home” than Pudong and a 44 Renmibi cab ride later I was back in the cold apartment I first visited some six or seven years ago, upon my first trip to Shanghai.

My uncle bought the flat a little over a decade ago, when he had the good sense that all things money were headed across and above the Taiwan Strait, straight into the heart of Shanghai. Later, when business died down he sought to tie up loose ends and considered selling the flat. By then, the Shanghai flat had become something of a popular destination amongst family and friends and friends of friends. The idea was thus: Hey, the Ho’s have a house in Shanghai. We have family/friends in Shanghai. Let’s visit and stay at the Ho’s house. And happily, my uncle lent them the keys and happily, they stayed rent/rate free in one of the world’s grandest cities. It is ideal for visitors and residents alike. Situated west of the Yangtze River at a now less busy crossroads (before, it was home to Shanghai’s busiest Street of Bars and Drunken Rowdiness), the flat is a ten to fifteen minute walk (extravagantly convenient by Shanghai standards) from two major subway lines and, if one resides on a higher floor, boasts hazy views of the city’s skyline. Naturally when it came time, for my uncle at least, to sell the apartment, there was a resounding “No!” that emanated from all who have stayed and all who planned on staying. My uncle put his hands up in defeat. He shrugged. “Alright, alright,” he said, “It was just an idea. We will keep the house.”

And so the house remained ours, filled with my uncle’s tasteless furniture and many plastic tubs filled with mysteries of business passed. Who knew that less than two years after my uncle had sought to sell it would rise to such eminent use?

It is here that my brother has made a new(ish) life for himself. I woke on a cold, gray Friday morning in an empty apartment, knowing that my brother had left for work and that I would soon step out to see the city. I opened the door to the balcony, feeling both the bitter cold wind and several rusty hangers strike my forehead. I squinted, then closed my eyes, trying to imagine what it would be like to live in this city. Then opened them. What would it be like, every morning, to take in my laundry with my back to this view?

I couldn’t imagine it. Closing the door behind me, I stepped back in and walked to the room most familiar to me, in any house: the kitchen. It is, I believe, in the kitchen where one can gauge the “settled in-ness” of a person’s residence. As I saw that day, my brother has yet to “settle in.”

Emeril Lagasse’s nightmare.

Of these items, the cereal, Swiss Miss, pasta and peanut oil are recent purchases. The other items may very well be antiques, remnants of my uncle’s periodic visits of yore.
Like any reasonable and well educated person, my brother keeps his vitamins atop the microwave.
And subsists, when he is not being treated out to dinner by our vast army of relatives, on microwavable buns and dumplings, so that he may warm the vitamins at the same time.

Calcium deficit beer lover’s delight: Asahi Milk. The cows only chew malted barley.
Not the kitchen, but what is now the “guest” bedroom, with a sterling example of Chinese interior decorating at its finest. How many prints doth thou seest? Too many, methinks.

I returned to the dining room where on the table, which has been rechristened my brother’s “office,” I saw this:

In China, they don’t believe much in euphemism.

I did not like the flat. Not for me. But I could understand it and its being fitting for my brother. “There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done,” he said to me, “but I’m looking forward to slowing changing things my way.” It takes a big heart and an open mind to see a home for yourself, anywhere. I was glad that at least one of us was able to do so.

The Changs in Kaoshiung

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Every trip to Taiwan also means a visit down south to Kaoshiung, a port city at Taiwan’s southernmost tip. Distant relatives live there, and by ‘distant’ I mean my grandfather’s uncle and his children, a warm and energetic young couple whose kids are supposedly my aunt and uncle…or something like that. But they are by no means ‘distant’ in the emotional sense of the word. I watched their children Wayne and Jenny grow up just as they watched me grow up and now, with Jenny on the cusp of graduating from high school, I am beginning to feel the wistfulness that comes with seeing someone younger and more hopeful.

Distantly related though we are, it makes me happy when people look at us and assume we are sisters. According to her parents, Jenny admires me, learns much from me, but when I look at her, I see a young girl more self-assured and generous in heart than I was at that age. Now nearing twenty-five, I feel there is much I can learn from her. Her eyes are bright, her smile wide, and her hopes great but not so that she should be unwittingly crushed beneath their weight. I seldom hear her complain about her impossible workload (it is whatever I underwent during high school multiplied by one hundred) and when she hits a road block, she says, “I can figure it out. I can find a way.” If these are qualities she learned from me, let me rifle through my memory and revisit that young girl.

Jenny and I. See the resemblance?

Jenny attends Kaoshiung American School, an impoverished but acceptable counterpart to Taipei’s more financially robust version, and is contemplating spending her senior year abroad at Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire (where Mark Zuckerberg went). Wayne graduated from KAS two years ago and is now studying electrical engineering at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, whose cold and demographics are a far cry from the balmy tip of Southern Taipei, where diversity equals a handful of Chinese Mainlanders.

They are a simple family, in some ways very similar to the Taiwanese folks they’re surrounded by, and in some ways very different. Nearly six years ago I visited the United Kingdom with them and all together, we fell in love with the rolling green hills of Edinburgh and the bustling metropolitan of London. Wayne was about to start high school then and Jenny was a sixth grader – both, under their parents support and encouragement, were strong students with many talents and lofty academic dreams. I was a college dropout still trying to figure things out.

On a ferry ride to a place I remember by sight but have forgotten by name, I stood at the railing with Mr. Chang (for simplicity’s sake, I’ll call him Mr. Chang, when really he’s something like a great uncle or cousin), watching houses and ducks glide past as he told me, in his own way, that it doesn’t help to plan what we can’t know. “I was just beginning medical school when my father sold his watch-making business and bought a hospital,” he said, “The expectation was that I would graduate and head the hospital. It was a huge responsibility that came with enormous pressure. More than I could bear. When I graduated, I told my father no, I couldn’t accept the hospital. I wanted to start a small clinic and lead a simple life.” He did just that. He owns and operates a small, brightly lit clinic just steps away from where they live and because he sees his clients with a surgical mask, his patients stare at him blankly on the street when he waves to them and only come alive when he speaks. It is still hard work – he works from eight am to nine pm each day, and only takes vacations every other year or so when he can find a trustworthy and willing physician to take his place – but it is what he loves.

Mrs. Chang is a psychologist, a relatively new science in Taiwan. She specializes in sand therapy, which in the realms of psychology, is also relatively new. Her clinic occupies the floor above her husband’s and in the brightly lit space, one will find shallow boxes filled with sand and cabinets that open to reveal hundreds upon hundreds of miniatures: dolls, furniture, plastic shrubbery, cars, etc. Anything that you can think of, she has, only in miniature. The therapy consists of patients starting with an untouched box of sand and being encouraged to shape the sand anyway they want and to place upon it carefully selected miniatures that reflect, supposedly, their state of mind. Meanwhile, my aunt stands quietly by, scribbling notes and nodding and, when the patient is through, taking a photograph of your “work.” The sandscape changes when you are making progress, or regressing even, and only when you’ve plateaued emotionally does the sandscape remain static. (This last bit is my conjecturing). In 2005 I visited her clinic for the first time and made my own sandscape. A year later, I made another. I remember placing tiny plastic palm trees alongside sitting room furniture – whether this scene occurred in the first or second sandscape, I’ve forgotten. The photographs are stored somewhere on Mrs. Chang’s hard drive alongside her abundant notes and, I hope, her diagnosis that I have achieved emotional stability. Though she struggled to find clients in the beginning, is now steadily seeing five or six patients per week as Taiwan begins to accept the fact that yes, their society, like all societies around the world, is filled with crazies.

Mr. and Mrs. Chang.

 Their home in Kaoshiung bears her touch most distinctively. Like me, Mrs. Chang is neat. Not a freak about it, at least not by my standards, though her friends chide her and say she is “compulsive.”

Their family study center. Neat.

But fascinating to me, her person always seems slightly disheveled. Her clothes, though neat in the wardrobe, seem to wrinkle on her slight frame and her hair, despite the warm coaxing of an ionic Japanese hair dryer, remains wispy and unruly. She is the soft-spoken, clumsy wife of a rather severe looking doctor, but her brain is sharp, as are her eyes, from years of study and discipline. She adores Laura Ashley, lavender and Josh Groban and though her mother died two years ago, taking to the grave her secrets of Chinese northern-style cuisine, Mrs. Chang has recently discovered the joys of cooking. She lovingly prepares healthy meals for her husband, children and her father, now widowed, now eighty-nine.

Mr. Shen is my mother’s father’s uncle. Does that make sense? But they are roughly the same age. He too, is from Shandong Province in China and despite many years away from the mainland, he retains his hearty Shandong accent. Though his wife passed away two years ago, Mr. Shen adheres rigidly to his daily routine. To assert his independence, he lives in a converted studio above Mr. Chang’s clinic, though he dines and spends most of the day at his daughter’s home. Every morning, he is up at five, eats a simple breakfast of toast and milk (powder from a can because he likes it hot) and takes a thirty minute stroll around the park. Then he walks to the house, lets himself in and settles down in the living room where he reads the paper. Then he sits quietly as the family moves about him, getting ready for their own days. Mr. and Mrs. Chang leave for the clinic, Jenny for school, and then it is just him and Teswi, the Indonesian maid whose Chinese is poor and whom Mr. Shen addresses with a wave. “I don’t know her name,” he said to me, “I wave at her, and if she happens to see me, she’ll come.” In the afternoons after lunch, which is usually heated leftovers, he returns to the park to sit and chat with other retirees and grandmothers, many of them from Shandong like himself. Now a bachelor, he finds himself quite popular amongst the park’s older women, many of whom now widowed, see him as something of a catch. One of the women told Dr. Chang during a check up that she thought his father in law was “the most gentlemanly out of all the fellows” who frequented the park.

“They know I’m Dr. Chang’s father in law,” he told Mrs. Chang one evening, about a year after his wife passed, “They know that if they take up a companionship with someone like me, they’ll be in good hands.”

“Then why don’t you…” His daughter searched for the right word, “…date some of these women? It’s never too late to love another.”

“Ha!” Mr. shen said, “At my age, it’s more costly to enter into one serious relationship than it is to entertain a hundred acquaintances at the park. I’ll keep things as they are, thank you very much.”

When he’s finished with the paper, he sits quietly in the living room, staring at the opposite wall with his arms crossed. Two or three times a week the phone will ring during these quiet mornings and it will be his son on the other line, calling from Irvine, California with news of his grandson, Dennis, who is currently waiting to hear back from colleges. Mr. Shen eagerly waits to hear of Dennis.

I arrived in Kaoshiung on the night of his eighty-ninth birthday, for which his daughter made him braised pork knuckles and long-life noodles. He was already in bed, so I saw him late next morning. He was sitting, the paper already folded before him. I brought my toast to the living room to say hello. He greeted me warmly, just as my own grandfather would, and then the phone rang. It was Dennis’ father. I heard bits and pieces. “Illinois?…Is he going to go?… Ranked third, you say? Well that’s quite excellent, isn’t it? Third! In America!”

Later, as he sat eating his lunch – the last braised pork knuckle and knob of noodles – he asked me how much a small car costs in the United States. He was thinking about buying Dennis a car for his graduation. “He’s a good boy, you know, got himself into the third best electrical engineering department in the United States. Such a good boy. Many talents. Plays the saxophone and football and won the world championship for an art contest. Ranked third, that school in Illinois. No doubt he’ll need a car…”

Long life noodles. But not if you finish the whole plate…

I looked at the park’s most eligible bachelor, his lips gleaming with pork grease, his face glowing with pride. I tell him that a suitable car for a kid like Dennis should cost about 15K. Twenty, if he’s feeling generous. “You could even get him a nicer car, used,” I say, but he shakes his head. Probably not used, he says, Dennis is such a good kid. Did he tell me that school in Illinois is ranked third? Third! In the U.S! Believing that to live long one should only eat until seventy percent full, he proceeds to cleans the pork knuckle but leaves a bit of noodles on the plate.

Post-op

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My grandmother had her left breast removed yesterday afternoon and is now camping out at the Taipei Veterans General Hospital, a towering behemoth of health care as well as neglect (though because of population and shortage of health staff, there is not much to be done). My grandma was lucky and went under the knife far more quickly than anticipated, as it seems much of Taiwan seems to be waiting for some procedure or other, but the doctor came and informed her that she is to be discharged this afternoon. They need the bed, he said, you’re going to be in pain either way, so why not choose home?

Though I could see my grandmother’s fill with doubt and fear – what does she know about nursing her own gaping wound, I see his point. The hospital – all hospitals, it seems – is filled with people. My grandma is on the tenth floor, yet on my way down in the elevator, we stopped on every floor and always, a crush of people waited to get in, to get out. Walking down the corridors, I couldn’t help but peak in every room, and just like a run-down hotel in a good location, they were all filled. People both old and young, upbeat and down-trodden. Life and not so much life.

   The hospital’s main building.

The hospital’s seal. The word is rong and it means “glory and honor.” Rongming (榮民) is the phrase for “veterans,” meaning, honorable people who served their country.

The hospital’s lobby with a giant Taiwanese flag, just in case patients wake up on their way in or out and forget where they are.

I got a kick out of the young nurses in their clean, white uniforms and their little hats, pinned to their hair. They are all very nice, soft-spoken young women, often cowed by the doctors.

The motto on the nurses’ carts. Is this true? I think so.

                       Chinese IV.

My grandma’s older sister, bending over to whisper something. When I asked U.S. medical students interning in Taiwanese hospitals what the biggest difference was between health care in the U.S. and in Taiwan was, they replied, “The role of family.” Taiwanese hospitals let families take a much bigger role in a patient’s wellness – but I think this has more to do with the culture as well.

A Sunny Day in Taipei

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My first week here was extremely cold and I found myself regretting my decision to visit Taipei during the winter. Houses here – or our house at least – have no heat. Couple that with our new tile floors and with my aunt’s ardent belief that all windows must be kept open for constant circulation, well, you’ve got yourself a veritable ice box.

Somewhere in the middle of the second week however, temperatures became bearable (15 to 17 degrees Celsius) and then, a few days later, almost warm. The sun made its first appearance since my arrival at the tail end of Chinese New Year celebrations and my aunt, uncle and cats were eager to soak up the warmth. Now, the temperatures have dropped again and I am shivering, wondering if I’ll ever come back around this time of year. No matter, I can still revisit some recent, warmer memories…

               My uncle, reading on the balcony. On weekends he prefers Buddhist scriptures and meditation to finance books and magazines.

On the balcony over, my aunt spreads our blankets out to sun, believing with the rest of Asia (regardless of how smoggy their cities are, Asians prefer air-drying to dryers) that the sun’s rays kill germs.

And at my uncle’s feet, Fat Cat (there are two cats – one fat, the other less so and called, unsurprisingly, Small Cat) suns in a cardboard box.

The Year of the Rabbit

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My grandma was diagnosed with breast cancer two days before Chinese New Year. Before her trip to the States, she had felt a lump in her breast and wisely (for peace of mind, because what you don’t know for sure can’t really worry you) chose to get it biopsied after her month-long vacation. She didn’t think it would be anything, but it was very much something and the night she received her diagnosis she called my aunt’s house on the sixth floor. My cousin and I were sprawled out on the couch, watching an old movie on HBO when the phone rang. Languidly, I reached over and picked up. My grandmother’s voice was somber and immediately I sensed something was wrong, but she did not want to speak to me. Instead, she asked if my aunt was home.

My aunt took the receiver and after a brief moment said, “Oh god.” And then, “Stop crying. Stop crying. You have options, don’t cry.”

It could be worse, like many things, but at the same time, it could not be worse. It’s stage one, but to be safe, my grandmother has decided to have her whole breast removed. I was horrified at first, thinking, “Why, if radiation treatments will do?” But doctors have seen their fair share of women who, opting to just have radiation treatments for stage one, regret it years later when the cancer comes back with a vengeance and takes away more than their breasts.

I did speak to my grandmother that night, but not because I wanted to. She insisted to my aunt that she was fine, and that she wanted to be alone. Because I was sitting stone-faced in front of the TV, my aunt, cousin and uncle thought I could comfort her without becoming too emotional. They pushed the receiver to me, whispering for me to tell grandma that we would go pick her up and bring her here, so she wouldn’t have to pass the night alone – but I knew better. Common sense tells us that people, when faced with grief, need company. But experience tells me that solitude is the first and necessary step to accepting grief. What makes us strongest is the knowledge that there are certain moments we can handle alone. Because other people- our husbands and wives, our friends and family – as much as we want or hope, they too, can die and disappear. My grandma, having recently lost two siblings and her husband, knows this better than most people.

Thus when I took the phone, I wanted my grandmother to know that I would be there for her, in whatever capacity I could – but most of all, I wanted her to be strong. But I was not strong enough. My voice cracked as soon as I said hello and before she could say anything at all I was crying and she was softly trying to comfort me. “It’s okay, it’s okay!” she said, “It’s only stage one, see? You don’t have anything to worry about.”

For the time being, she is doing better. She has adapted to this new knowledge of herself and last night, called with the decision to have the breast removed. Her voice was steady, as was mine and what I had first sensed as false cheer was her new-found resolve.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

She was silent for a moment as though she wasn’t sure, but she was just searching for the right words. “By removing the whole breast,” she said, “I give myself the best chance possible.”

I nodded into the receiver, silenced by her bravery.

Just Another Day in Taipei…

Betty3 Comments

Only in Taipei would I ever spend the morning at the temple and go straight to karaoke with my cousins. My grandfather’s name, along with those of our ancestors, are placed at Zhao Ming Temple in the outskirts of Taipei City. It’s a low-key temple, nestled in hills of Yang Ming Mountain.When I say “name,” I mean a placard that is meant to represent the spirit of these ancestors. A family buys the placard from the temple, which promises to keep it until the temple itself is demolished or destroyed. If it is not there materially, the name exists in spirit.

And when I say “low-key,” I mean, it’s not a garish temple outfitted in gold and marble. The nuns don’t all have their own laptops nor do they have a queen bee nun that is driven around in a bullet proof Mercedes (there are plenty of these “humble” religious leaders about in Asia). The temple is run by a handful of elderly nuns and their fresh-faced disciples, and all share in the household duties and worship services. They cook and serve meals on special occasions such as funerary ceremonies or on the first day of the new year, during which many families choose to eat vegetarian. After lighting incense for our ancestors and the deities that watch over them, we dined at the temple. We can choose, if for some reason the temple no longer pleases us, to move the placard to another temple, but at present we are very pleased with this one. Its name, Zhao Ming, means “Divine light.”

 The temple’s exterior.

It is the swastika, a word derived from the Sanskrit word “svastika” meaning any lucky or auspicious object. Buddhists believe it was stamped upon Buddha’s chest when he died and they call it the heart seal. You’ll find it on temples all over Asia – the Nazis have nothing to do with it. Hitler, after much deliberation, decided to use the Swastika on his flag to convey “the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man, and, by the same token, the victory of the idea of creative work.” Whatever.

My uncle, holding his incense and waiting for his turn at the altar.

The altar for ancestors. Each placard represents one family. The food on the middle table is prepared by the nuns. After it is offered, they eat it. The side tables are meant for families to place fruit and other goods. Normally, after the fruit is offered, it is left there for the nuns to eat, but on the new year, they make an exception. Families take the fruit home for themselves because it’s lucky to eat on this day.

And because some kids don’t like fruit, no matter how lucky it is, parents make the most out of the situation…

Volunteers cooking in the temple kitchen. No animals killed or cut in this kitchen ever. Truly vegan.

Our vegetarian lunch – less exquisite than New Year’s Eve dinner, but no less delicious, and far more refreshing.

Karen and Melody – my cousins – singing in our tiny private room. Karen went from being one of those, “Oh I can’t sing, don’t make me sing,” girls to a mic hog that now jumps up and down sofas.

Taiwanese super idol. I have no idea who he is.

But I know who she is…

And that’s how I spent the first day of the Chinese New Year.