Bloated Stomach

I write now with a bloated stomach. I really can't help it. The food here is good, but that only begins to explain why I stuff myself so regularly when I am in Taiwan. Another thing is family. As my grandfather is fond of saying, "Food tastes better with more people." That's a crude translation from a much more elegant Chinese saying, but it does the job.

Ever since I was a kid, having a "healthy appetite" has been touted as a great virtue. On my way to getting a second bowl of rice, I'd have people complement me for being a "big eater." After my vertical growth stalled and took on horizontal dimensions, people could no longer call me a "growing boy," but the ethos of "big-eating" is hard to shake.

I chalk it up to my ancestors, who were Hakka farmers in the highlands of central Taiwan. I am only a couple of generations removed from a genuinely farming generation. As I am told, food could be hard to come by in those days. Thus "Have you eaten yet?" is the common greeting even today, taking the place of "Hello," or "How are you?"

Well, hell yeah, I've eaten today!

In the Taiwanese movie, "Eat Drink Man Woman," almost all of the important scenes are filmed around the dinner table. That is much the way that my family in Taiwan operates; social time is structured around meals. Lunch at 12:30; Dinner at 6:00. En punto. Eating is a family event, not something that you do hunched before a television set or over paperwork sitting on your desk at work. And to not eat your unreasonably large fill would be unappreciative. So, when I come back to Taiwan, I guess I eat to catch up on all of the meals I have missed with my relatives.

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After disembarking flight BR017, I claimed my baggage, hopped a bus to the High-Speed Rail, took the two-hour train ride to Kaohsiung, then took the KMRT to the central train station, before finally walking ten minutes to arrive at my grandfather's house. Both the High-Speed Rail and the Mass Rapit Transit systems are new additions in the last couple of years. When I first started coming to Taiwan with my parents, one of my uncles would drive the four-and-a-half hours from Kaohsiung to the international airport in Taoyuan to pick us up. Obviously, some things have changed.

Upon arriving at my grandpa's place, I was greeted with an empty living room, where my grandpa spends most of his time. After looking around a bit, I found him in the backyard with a grizzled beard tending to a bonsai tree. Some things haven't changed. Not yet.

The Hub of My Travels

At some point during my fourteen-hour flight earlier today, I started thinking about the number of times I have flown to Taiwan. It's hard to count, but my guess is about twenty times in all. Movie selections were poor (House Bunny being the only title I can remember), so I had my TV screen set to the interactive map option that gives you all the flight info you could ever want.

I started imagining superimposing my life's travels onto the map. I've lived in a bunch of different places--Englewood, CO; Kaohsiung and Taipei, Taiwan; Swarthmore, PA; Quito, Ecuador; San Francisco, CA--and I've obviously visited even more places. If I drew a line to represent every single flight I've ever taken in my life, I think an interesting pattern would emerge. And the most interesting part of the pattern that I never truy realized: the Taoyuan International Airport in Taiwan would certainly look like the central hub in my network of flights. I've only ever lived in Taiwan for six years, and I don't even have citizenship in the country. But I suppose it is, as the hub of my travels, more than any other place my home.

It's a strange thing for me to say. Because after flying in and out of the island for over twenty years, I cannot say that I have grown up with the place. Every time I return is a Proustian encounter: accumulated years of aging and change, as in the wrinkles of Marcel's grandmother, reveal themselves abruptly suddenly and render the familiar thing momentarily unrecognizable.