It wasn’t a good time to go to Taiwan. Nancy Pelosi’s layover in Taipei in early August had heightened tensions with China, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine had individuals asking whether or not Taiwan confronted an identical menace.
My father and I scrolled via information—of aggressive Chinese army drills and infinite U.S. delegations—and debated whether or not it was secure to go. But when weighed in opposition to a hypothetical, the fact of my grandmother’s most cancers gained out. She was refusing chemotherapy. We left in September; higher to be early than late.
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Upon touchdown, I discovered the Taiwan of my childhood summers largely unchanged. I felt foolish for anticipating in any other case. Almost every little thing was as I remembered—my grandmother’s Thirteenth-floor residence close to Taipei’s bustling Shilin Night Market; the division retailer the place my father’s household had run a small leather-goods store; that one stall with gua bao, fluffy white buns full of tender pork stomach, and the proprietor who will get bossier every time I see her. The solely trace of tumult was a replica of the Taipei Times within the snack aisle of a comfort retailer with the headline “China Unlikely to Invade Taiwan Soon.”
The media had described the environment as “defiant” however, to me, it simply felt regular. At More Fine, an optical store within the central district of Gongguan the place my dad and mom and I all the time get our glasses, my father requested the proprietor why everybody appeared so calm. “It’s numbness,” he referred to as from the again of the store. “What else is there to do?”
As I headed over to my grandmother’s residence, I mulled over the store proprietor’s phrases. I felt equally numb, pissed off by all of the unfeeling evaluation of the nation the place my prolonged household lives, the place my dad and mom grew up—and the place my grandmother is dying of most cancers. Pundits picked over Taiwan’s historical past and prospects, typically with no private stake within the matter. To watch a spot so acquainted to me be decreased to foreign-affairs speaking factors was disorienting: “the most dangerous place on Earth”; “a progressive, thriving democracy”; “safe until at least 2027.” I used to be offended that we had to consider this in any respect, that the burdens of residing and dying weren’t sufficient.
With my grandmother, although, the current was all that mattered. I sat by her aspect, rubbing her again as I listened to her life story, which I used to be decided to document earlier than I left. I positioned my cellphone on my knee as I yelled questions into her ear. Her listening to is poor, however her reminiscence is surprisingly clear.
She remembers, for example, the 2 different Taiwanese ladies who had been in love with my grandfather. They had all labored within the houses of U.S. troopers primarily based in Tianmu in the course of the Nineteen Fifties. The prettiest of her opponents, she instructed me, had rosy pores and skin and sensible dancing abilities.
But my grandfather, a prepare dinner, pursued my grandmother, a shy housekeeper. “I was the most pitiful, but I was diligent and good,” she stated. She famous his neatly made mattress and the books on his desk; he was a person who wished to rebuild, who was hardworking and properly mannered. He started sending her braised pigs’ ft from an area stall, later bringing her scallops and different delicacies that she had by no means tried earlier than. “They were delicious!” she stated with a mischievous chuckle.
But she had additionally learn the loneliness in his shoulders. Before they married, he instructed her about his spouse and two younger kids misplaced to him on the mainland. They had been considered one of many households separated within the chaos of the Communist takeover in 1949, when he turned stranded in Taiwan. The Nationalists swiftly enacted a no-contact coverage with China that might final for many years, its bans on journey and mail communication cleaving households in two. My grandmother—a benshengren born in Taiwan marrying a waishengren from China—accepted all of it, together with the picture of his different household that he stored in his pockets. “When I was little and I didn’t understand,” my mom as soon as instructed me, “I’d sneak my photo into his wallet too.”
He proved a devoted husband and father to their 5 kids. As quickly as he completed work, he headed again to their small residence, which she scrubbed clear and embellished with flowers. “Our home was the prettiest, the cleanest,” she boasted. “While the kids did their homework, he would sit with them, sharpening their pencils by hand.” They not often fought. She credit him with giving her a cheerful life—one which she, as an adopted little one handled poorly by her household, couldn’t have imagined for herself. “I was the most blessed,” she stored repeating to me. “Life with your grandfather was blessed.”
One factor that my grandmother didn’t convey up—however that my mom had instructed me about years earlier—was the journey my grandfather made to see his first spouse and daughter in 1985. (His son had died by then.) The ladies had traveled from northeastern China to Hong Kong, the place my grandfather’s brother lived; my grandfather met them there.
My grandmother packed sweaters and mangoes and cash that they couldn’t spare into my grandfather’s suitcase for his week-long journey. He’d had a stroke, and was unable to stroll with out a cane. “It was an impossible trip,” my mom stated. “But he made it happen.”
Per week after returning to Taiwan, my grandfather died. When I requested my grandmother how his go to to Hong Kong had made her really feel, she instructed me that he had gone to see his brother. When I requested once more, she modified the topic.
I flew house on my grandmother’s 87th birthday. Before I left, she patted me on the arm and instructed me to not fear. “Your uncle and aunts will take care of me, as will all of your cousins,” she stated. I thanked her, and instructed her to bao zhong, take care.
But I do fear—about how the most cancers will bloom, about whether or not regular life in Taiwan will proceed. I consider how my grandmother has to rock her weight between the eating chairs to succeed in the kitchen, how she wouldn’t be capable of escape if battle broke out. And I want, maybe uselessly, for a world that might care about Taiwan even when it weren’t a beacon of democracy in Asia or a necessary producer of semiconductors or a pawn in a great-power play. A world that might peer into the nice and cozy glow of my grandmother’s residence—my aunts laughing as my nephews scramble over the couches and pull humorous faces, all of us lastly collectively. I want that may very well be sufficient.
This article seems within the January/February 2023 print version with the headline “I Went to Taiwan to Say Goodbye.”