Growing up, the first day of the lunar calendar, known widely as the Lunar New Year, was simply known to me as Chinese New Year. At the time, I didn’t consider myself to be Chinese or Taiwanese, nor had I grasped the separate meaning of either yet. I just knew we did some generally “Chinese” things at home. What is that, you ask?
Our version of “Chinese” New Year: hot pot galore, laden with fat-inlaid pork belly slices, rows upon rows of every type of fish ball imaginable, bowls heaped high with my favorite fried bean curd and enoki mushrooms.
Bi-weekly visits to my grandma and eating at the same vegetarian restaurant since before I can even remember.
Constant rapid-fire Mandarin, along with this other language I couldn’t quite understand yet—which I would later come to know as Taiwanese—with words that lit a bulb in my head and words that left a blank.
These were all things that were integral parts of my childhood, and yet, I didn’t find my identity within them, my Taiwanese side. My family is interesting in the way that one part of my family is Chinese but still Taiwanese, and the other side is Taiwanese through and through. Whoa, slow your roll, what do you mean Chinese but Taiwanese? Let me explain.
My dad’s mom, my nainai, was born in Zhejiang Province, China in 1937. This was a time when bullets flew between the crumpling Chinese Army and the rapidly advancing Japanese Army. Her mom, my taipo, witnessed the widespread sexual assault that was happening throughout China—much like the Rape of Nanking—which traumatized her deeply. They held on and survived through that time, but soon after, war broke out again between the now-divided Communists and Nationalists. To escape, they fled to Taiwan alongside the rest of the Chinese Nationalist army. Around the same time, there were millions of similar stories across China, including the man who would become my yeye (grandpa).
As Chinese immigrants flooded into Taiwan, war-hardened with hate for the Japanese and the Communists, the local Taiwanese were still reeling from the transition of being “Japanese” to becoming “Chinese,” a result of years and years of Japanization, and the now onslaught of Sinicization from the Chinese. Those people included my great-grandparents, descendants of immigrants from Fujian Province who migrated to the then-Qing Dynasty ruled Taiwan in the 18th and 19th centuries due to its proximity to trade routes and the mainland . Like all of my local Taiwanese great-grandparents, they grew up in a time of “model colony” Taiwan, which the Japanese sought to use to show the world the benefits of their colonialism. It’s true that Japanese colonization brought unprecedented infrastructure, modern education, an industrialized economy, and advances in medicine to Taiwan; however, this was also a time where local Taiwanese and Japanese students were segregated from one another. The local Taiwanese people were forced to adapt Japanese customs, names, and language, with the intention of erasing bits of long-standing Taiwanese traditions incrementally and turn them into “true Japanese citizens.” The result of all these changes caused a massive increase in quality of life for Taiwanese people, and unlike other Japanese colonies, such as Korea, Taiwan grew fond of Japan, with some even yearning for colonial times long after its abrupt end in 1945. Traces of our colonial past can be seen throughout my family, from the oyako-don (egg chicken rice) or chawanmushi (steamed egg) with Taiwanese bah-sò (braised pork) generously slathered on top with the caramel-like notes of soy sauce wafting gently into your nose. Even Taiwanese as a language holds onto that Japanese influence, with words such as obasang (obasan in Japanese) and ojisang (ojisan in Japanese) to describe elderly men and women, respectively. I’ve realized that Taiwan as I know it is like a recipe, a mishmash of the various cultures that crossed paths with its inhabitants or even once ruled it, creating a unique mesh that isn't quite replicated anywhere else.
My first foray into my identity came during a Buddhist summer camp that I begrudgingly attended in Taiwan. It was 2019, and I had just freed myself from the pain of going to school at the elementary after-school/preschool that my grandparents owned in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan, since the after-school or an-ching-ban only extended up to 7th grade. All throughout the first half of the year, I’d put my mind on overdrive thinking of things to do, places to go, things to eat, things to buy on my first “free” trip. The bomb dropped at dinner one night and I was NOT happy. My mind raced with the things that I would miss out on because of the camp:
The daily journeys I went on with my mom, which would usually start with her saying “wo men chu men ba” or “let’s go out”, which almost always meant BOMB street food to follow.
The visits to my grandparent’s buxiban, or after-school school (something normal in Taiwan EVERY Taiwanese kid hated), where I’d run around in the lawn with friends and play sardines.
The trips up to my xiao-a-yi’s (little aunt) apartment in Zhubei, where she would take me to the Jhulien temple to pray for my academic fortune, leaving with an irritated nose from the thick incense smoke and a small, green backpack amulet to ensure that the gods extended their blessings wherever I went.
Eventually it came to the day where I had to leave for the camp. It was at Fo Guang Shan, a huge Buddhist monastery in Kaohsiung, an hour south of where I was. I was overwrought with fear the entire ride—this being the first time I’d been on my own, and for a whole week too.
“Will I fit in?” The American in me constantly questioned, knowing well that there were a lot of things I didn’t share with the local kids, like music taste, inside jokes, slang, ability to write—the list went on.
As we arrived at the designated building, a weather-racked, multi-story complex with iron grills like jail bars affixed to windows that were long in need of replacing, I saw a plethora of other kids marching to the same fate, little soldiers marching into the unknown. Before I knew it, I was already climbing up a steep gravel path, dripping and panting as the brutal Taiwan heat mingled with thick, muggy, humid air, truly a recipe for hell.
“Hai yao duo jiu ah (how much longer),” I heard one of my brothers in combat complain.
At last, we made it to a long white building, situated on a large expanse of concrete. It looked newer, its porous walls free of the murky stains from years of exposure to humidity. In the distance, I heard a shrill diiiiing of a bell, perhaps a monk finishing his daily prayer. We filed inside, looking around. It was a large room with chairs stacked up high on the sides. Ten boards of rubber gym tiles laid in the expanse.
Maybe it’s not all that bad, I thought to myself. My expectation going into this camp had been sitting on cheap, pink, backless plastic chairs, while listening to a shiny-headed monk drill on and on about the dharma or how I could save myself. Ok, maybe there were more than a few hours of that during my time there.
一
二
三
四
五
六
七
八
九
十
We were counted off into small groups, myself being in the 第八小隊 or small group eight. At each mat, a yellow-shirted team leader herded kids into circles, occasionally SHHHing someone.
“Let’s go around and introduce ourselves with our name, grade, and where we’re from,” Xiao Jun, our group leader, said as the chatter died down.
It was finally my turn. I looked around and swallowed my fear.
“My name is Tang Jun-hao and I’m a 7th grader. My parents are Taiwanese but I’m from Los Angeles.”
From then on, my name was meiguo ren or American. Sure, it may have felt like a label being slapped on me, but it was also the start of going from meiguo ren to taiwan ren (Taiwanese) by the end of the week.
Activity One: Human Knots.
Five minutes later, I found myself treacherously stepping over someone’s outstretched arm, raising my arm, and ducking under a human arch. It would’ve been MUCH easier, but here was the catch: we weren’t allowed to step off the board. The thing about human knots is that you can’t do it alone. You can’t just step around daintily and *magically* find yourself back in a circle, hand-in-hand again. It takes teamwork, communication, coordination, and strategy. Over the course of the next four days, every “activity” we did was together. Karaoke, lily pad jumping, guessing who was behind the screen. By the end of the week, I knew a plethora of slang words, like tai che le (that’s crazy) or sui la (YEAHH), I knew who Mandopop king Jay Chou was, having been introduced to his latest song 告白地球 or Love Confession by one of my friends Jian-hong. Heck, I even knew the most common Taiwanese names from the sheer amount of kids I met there (hint: the guy who put me on Love Confession). I would like to think that I left as a taiwan ren, even though I was still a meiguo ren. The me at the beginning would’ve balked at this, but I was actually sad to leave, leaving behind four days of unimpeded fun, team-building, and fraternizing. But one thing lingered in my mind.
♫ 親愛的愛上你,
ching ai de ai shang ni
從那天起,
chong na tian qi
甜蜜的很輕易 ♫
tian mi de hen jin yi
The ear-grabbing lyrics that, unbeknownst to me, were the anthem of Taiwan’s youth, played on and on in my head.
I need to listen to this song NOW, I thought to myself as we turned into the parking garage of my grandparents’ apartment. For a while, it was just this song. But then, one song turned into two and two songs turned into four. I began delving into the world of Mandopop, the music of my motherland.
Eric Chou, Jay Chou, Mayday, J.Sheon, OSN, Lala Hsu, A-Lin.
I was 5000 miles away from Taiwan, yet, it seemed as if I was on the bustling streets of Taiwan, with motorcycles whizzing past me and that greasy odor of exhaust wafting up into the air as obasangs ordered food loudly in Taiwanese Hokkien at the many restaurants lining the streets. The music became my connection to Taiwan, my reason to temporarily not miss Taiwan so much, my discovery of who I was as Taiwanese.
Strangely, listening to Taiwanese radio also comforted me.
“Hey Alexa, play ICRT”
Cuffing my beat-up, black Sennheiser headphones gently over my ears, I would lay down and close my eyes, losing myself to the sound from within. I wasn’t there to listen to the music (well, initially I was, but I soon began adding "If I Can’t Have You” by Shawn Mendes or “Boy with Luv” by BTS and Halsey to my playlist “vibebox”) but it was the advertisements I sought after. For some reason, there was something about hearing the preening voices in Mandarin convincing you to buy sweet and sour sauce, or the chattering of the DJ, as if I was listening in the car in Taiwan itself, off to buy another bag of steaming scallion pancakes in Thank You! paper bags.
The same thing occured with Taiwanese news stations. I would search up the stations that we so often watched at dinner in Taiwan, or with my grandpa late at night: TVBS, FTV, SET NEWS. It brought back these memories with my family in Taiwan and unintentionally imparted me with knowledge on Taiwan’s current events. I’d know about the latest mayoral recalls or a car accident on some random road in Taichung. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that Taiwanese commercials are either about a) cars or b) medicine, and that they report on absolutely everything reportable, even if it’s just a minor motorcycle accident.
One thing led to another, and soon, I began searching up and watching Taiwanese Youtube channels, improving my Mandarin while learning slang and the latest “inside knowledge” that only true locals would know. It even became a tradition for my mom and I to set up an iPad at the front of the dinner table and watch Taiwanese food vlogs (shoutout to 台灣1001故事 [Taiwan 1001 Stories] for providing us with never-ending, mouthwatering food videos) on weekends as we chowed down. I began learning more about the culture that I grew up with but had never connected with fully, as I hadn’t grown up there: foods I didn’t know about before, stories from the everyday lives of locals, and social attitudes on every issue imaginable.
Discovering who you are is a lifelong process and more than just culture. I’d like to think that I jump started the process of discovering myself in 2019 within the cultural category, started by a song little known outside of the Mandarin-speaking world but all the rage within (side note: Jay Chou, please tour in LA).
♫ 親愛的 愛上你 從那天起 ♫
Translated, it roughly means “I’ve loved you since the day we met.”
You can call this a love letter to Taiwan, or a rant about my journey of self-discovery, but to every step that I’ve taken to connect with Taiwan since then: I’ve loved you since the day we met. You, as in the nights I would stay up till 2 am with my hand under my arms, probably numb for god-knows-how-long, discovering the next addition to my Mandopop playlist “想家“ (which means “missing home”), and reliving the experiences of summers gone by with the radio I so often listened to in Taiwan. You, as in doom-scrolling YouTube and finding Taiwanese street interview videos where I’d pick up street slang and a laugh. You, as in the very escapes to Taiwan itself, which meant getting lost in Dayi Night Market trying to find that metal cart with a man with an Adidas tee double-tasking flipping vegetable skewers and rhythmically sloshing soy sauce on both sides of a steaming grilled pork-blood cake with the intricacy of a brush stroke.
Because of You, I am Taiwanese unapologetically, or as the locals say, guá sī tâi-uân lâng.
