A Sense of Place

1) My grand-uncle was born in Dong Shih, a small farming town in the central highlands of Taiwan. He grew up speaking Hakka, the dialect of his parents, and Japanese, the language of formal schooling during Japanese occupation. My grand-uncle has lived through colonialism, World War II, forty years of martial law and an economic miracle that saw Taiwan engage the global economy at unprecedented levels. While his beginnings may have been humble and provincial, his knowledge of the world is vast and his experiences diverse. My grand-uncle forged a career as a successful businessman, but as life would have it, his wife became ill at a young age and was largely confined to the house. He refused to leave his wife's side and never once left the country even as opportunities for travel became commonplace and it became clear that my grand-aunt's health would neither worsen terribly nor substantially improve.

A couple years ago, my grand-aunt passed away. So at the age of seventy, my grand-uncle left Taiwan for the first time in his life to go to Japan. Upon his return, I was eager to hear his impressions of the wider world, what it was like for him to step off Taiwanese soil for the first time. With a proud grin, he responded to my inquiries, "Taiwan is a great place to live."

2) A couple weeks ago, I participated in a tour of the Village Bottoms district of West Oakland, which for over half a century has been the object of systematic marginalization. I moved to San Francisco about a year ago, and I must admit that I know embarrassingly little about the Bay Area and its history. Fortunately for me, the leader of the tour, Marcel Diallo, a Village Bottoms native, intimated vast and deep knowledge of the neighborhood. Every block we walked he infused with rich history. For years, he has labored to revitalize the neighborhood for which he harbors obvious love. At a venue that Marcel has toiled to designate as a cultural space, there hangs a portrait of his grandmother. On the portrait reads a quote from Marcel's grandmother: "When I sat for this portrait in 1951, West Oakland was one of the few places we as Black folks were allowed to live. Today I wouldn't leave the Bottoms if they paid me."

3) I was talking to a colleague the other day trying to figure out how she landed in San Francisco after growing up her whole life in Michigan. She told me she had been ready for something new and wanted to experience for herself all the hullaballoo about San Francisco. Three fantastic years, she tells me, she has been in San Francisco. Now she's itching to move on to something new again. "You can only do Bay to Breakers so many times. You know what I mean?"