Summer in Fast Forward
Friends,
Hello from the United States, where we have had the full experience. I have eaten an ill-advisable number of tortillas. We’ve nieced and nephewed and cousined and told people “I can’t believe how much you’ve grown.” We’ve driven back and forth across the western Kentucky landscape and in the process been stuck behind a tractor carrying oversized bales of hay for several miles. We’ve sought out the foods we’ve missed that are unavailable in Taiwan. We’ve sat behind a man trying to convert his airplane neighbor away from Catholicism. We’ve watched as water rose disconcertingly behind our Texas family’s home while simultaneously watching a typhoon approach Taiwan. We’ve seen a wild turkey from a safe distance and many, many deer who do not maintain safe distances. We’ve eaten more cheese in the past month than the entire rest of the year. We’ve been bitten by ticks. We’ve been reunited with old canine loves and mourned the passage of time that gets etched so quickly on their faces. We’ve met and fallen in love with new canine members of families. We’ve been reminded of loudness and how often moving through the United States feels like walking on eggshells. We’ve board gamed and movied and shopped. We have eaten what feels like entirely too much.
This is my fourth trip in six years back to the US, and at this point I’m not sure what interesting things I have to say about the experience. It continues to have moments that fit like a nostalgic glove and moments that are surreal and sometimes repulsive. A few snippets: when you approach Paducah, Kentucky, there’s a giant confederate flag by an overpass you can see from a mile away, then a short bit later there’s a water tower with an image of different colored children’s faces saying “Better Together.” The Tesla factory near Austin’s airport appears to be the largest building I have ever seen in my entire life, a veritable walled city or fortress or what have you. There are so many flavors of Goldfish now (and Spicy Dill Pickle is the best of the four I’ve tried). A garage door repairman’s truck says, “Jesus is the only DOOR to salvation.” The rural county I spent my formative years in has only gone from 10k to 14k people since 1990, but somehow now has three Mexican restaurants and two coffee shops. These are things that stand out to me when I look. I do not know how much they would have stood out before.
This intense looking once a year is special. It’s sad, of course, to think of who or what wasn’t present this year but was last year, to think of who or what won’t be present next year. (One candidate: my hair.) Who or what am I seeing for the last time? Some people seem to barely change, while others (and, obviously, children) are changing in fast-forward. It’s like seeing the whole world through those collages our photo apps automatically make of the same face across the years. There’s the duality of being happy with how far I’ve come and uncomfortable with how much I’ve aged, there’s the extrapolation into the future, there’s the complicated overlapping of that same duality internally and externally.
Ultimately, it reminds me of summer camp when I was a child. Nerd camp was my favorite part of the year, the one time where I felt like I was being my authentic self (which, I realize now, is kind of bullshit - instead I was presenting a version of my self that other people enjoyed being around and liked that feeling), which meant jamming a year’s worth of hopes, dreams, stress, and emotion into that short period of time. Trips to the US now do not supersede my life in Taiwan, but they represent a part of my life that is barely touched otherwise. If I still lived in the US, all these feelings are ones I would feel, but at a much slower pace.
I’ve written before about how living abroad offers a sort of clarifying perspective on life. Just like living in a small apartment makes you really consider every object you store in that apartment, living far away from the first 35 years of your life makes you really consider which parts of that life you’re going to work to continue. Which is not to say I’ve continued all the strands that I want, nor have all the strands that have continued bring me great fulfillment or joy. But I do think about them a lot more than I used to, and these annual trips sometimes feel like I’m having my face shoved into those choices. It’s mostly good! It’s mostly stressful! And when I can step back, it’s really fascinating to fully consider.
It is, in short, a lot. I find myself constantly wanting to hide, to digest, to process, in quiet.
Which is where this newsletter comes in!
Further reading:
I cannot recommend enough two episodes of 誰來晚餐, the Taiwanese public television show that profiles ordinary families then has a celebrity eat dinner with them. The first is about a gay couple who run a restaurant on in a rural beach area. I had to pause the episode when it dove into the parents’ disapproval of the relationship. It was so uncomfortable! But I’m so glad I kept watching, because the guest, politician/gay rights activist Miao Poya/苗博雅, and her mother visit the family, and the way in which they immediately voice criticism of the parents’ thinking while also giving the parents room to gracefully come around on the subject is so masterful. The second episode is about a couple who run a free after school program for young children in a rural area. Their celebrity guest is less interesting, but it was so warm and inspiring to see how they’ve oriented their entire lives toward serving the children in their community - just a really uplifting bit of television.
Natalie Tai is my former student who introduced me to the above TV show, and she is continuing to do really good and important work from the Netherlands. This month she writes about racism and fetish fatigue in dating for Asian people.
Erica Berry, writing for Orion Magazine, goes long on mushrooms and foraging and the relative dangers versus cultural treatment of different foods. This one went in a lot of directions, but satisfyingly wove them all together.
The LA Review of Books has a long review by Christopher T. Fan covering two Taiwanese books: Taipei at Daybreak and Taiwan Travelogue. I haven’t gotten to the former, but as you’ve read, I loved the latter. The review has a ton of key context and explanation, very thorough, helpful, and thoughtful. However, I probably would argue it should’ve been split into two reviews - the argument for connecting the two books wasn’t quite persuasive.
Obvious from the get go that Rick Steves is a real one.
A couple from Kerim Friedman this time. First, his coauthored article on algorithms as they related to Bluesky, Twitter, misinformation, and emotional manipulation: very clearly stated and a useful resource for conversations. Second, in his newsletter he linked Adam Mastroianni’s “28 slightly rude notes on writing”. I am allergic to precious treatment of writing, but love articles that dive into analysis and craft, and this list rides that wave in a satisfying way: “What if a great piece of art is like a pearl: an irritant covered in a million attempts to make it go away?”
Related to Kerim on algorithms, highly recommend Mike Masnick on the distinction between community and echo chambers. There’s been a lot of conversation about what voices Bluesky is excluding, but I agree with Masnick that this argument starts from a faulty foundation.
Do you need an acerbic little takedown review in your life? Of course you do.
Tamara Hinson has a wonderful profile of the Alishan Forest Railway, a train in Taiwan that’s 118 years old and that I have only ridden a small segment of. The descriptions are great, and it definitely makes me want to revisit the area. This month, NPR also published Emily Feng’s postcard from the same place.
This month I learned that the planets in the romance languages and in Japanese are almost the same! Etymology!
Spanish as an example:
Monday = Lunes = Luna (Moon)
Tuesday = Martes = Mars
Wednesday = Miércoles = Mercury
Thursday = Jueves = Jupiter
Friday = Viernes = Venus
Saturday = Sábado = Saturn
Sunday = Domingo = Lord’s Day
The Spanish days of the week come from Latin, and are named after the Roman gods, which in turn inspired the names of planets. (Weekdays in English are named after Norse gods by comparison.) Now, Japanese, with the meaning of the first character:
Monday = 月曜日 = Moon
Tuesday = 火曜日 = Fire
Wednesday = 水曜日 = Water
Thursday = 木曜日 = Wood
Friday = 金曜日 = Gold
Saturday = 土曜日 = Earth
Sunday = 日曜日 = Sun
Elements! Or are they? More translations:
Mars = 火星
Mercury = 水星
Jupiter = 木星
Venus = 金星
Saturn = 土星
It lines up, perfectly! I’ve read a few articles about why this is, but more than likely the idea of a seven-day week with each name being connected to a celestial body probably came from the Middle East, to the Roman Empire, to the rest of the world. Japan, like China, didn’t use seven-day weeks traditionally, but the names for these days are hundreds of years old.
In Mandarin, because using seven-day weeks overlapped with western influence, one of the words used for week is connected to religion - 禮拜 - the second character being two hands clasped together in prayer. The other common characters for weeks are 週, which means a cycle, and 星期, which, once again, uses the word for star.
Finding unexpected connections is one of the great joys in life. I hope there’s one in your celestial week.
-g