Origin/Taiwanese Part 2

Origin

When people ask me where I’m from, I hesitate. I also sometimes forget what I answer, and I tell different things to different people. It’s not that I’m trying to lie or hide that I live in a blue-collar, working class town that is proud of its Wal-mart, Target, BJ’s, Barnes and Noble, and shopping mall. It’s not that I’m trying to purport myself as a privileged person if I say Andover, MA, or as a sophisticated, urban person by answering Boston.

Typically, I say New Hampshire for the sake of simplicity, because it is my permanent home address (which must give it some sort of legitimacy as claim to where I’m from) and, because, well, how many people do you know from New Hampshire? It just makes it easier for you to remember me, for me to stand out in your mind. Then there is the complicated question of how I’m also from Andover, MA, because that’s where I went to high school and that’s where my dad lives. So, sometimes, I say Boston, because that is the largest city closest to me.

At one point or another, the inconsistency is exposed and I have to explain that my parents are divorced. This is usually followed with an “Oh, I’m sorry,” or “That sucks,” or my personal favorite, “So do you get twice the stuff?” Then there are the people, which I for some reason frequently encounter when I visit different churches in New England, that ask where I’m from as though I should answer some exotic land or some Asian country because clearly, if you’re not Caucasian, you can’t actually be from America, right? So that conversation goes as follows:

“Hi, where are you from?”

“Oh, I’m from Salem, New Hampshire.”

“No, I mean, what nationality are you?”

“Well, my passport says I’m American.”

At this point the other party is significantly embarrassed enough to phrase their question properly, only to find that I say, perhaps out of my inherited, sassy nature, “Guess.” Then the conversation continues:

“Chinese.”

“No, the Chinese are our enemy.”

“Oh. Japanese? Korean? Cambodian? Vietnamese? Thai? Filipino?”

Then it really becomes more of a Guess-whatever-Asian-nationality-you-can-think-of-and-have-heard-of game.

“No.”

“Well, then, what are you?”

This is when my mother adores entering the conversation to explain how Taiwan and China have been separated since the Qing Dynasty, how our family was on the island for seven generations before Chiang Kai-shek (whom we fondly call Chiang Kai-shi, with “Kai-shi” translating as “should die”) invaded, how we speak two separate languages, that she actually can’t understand Chinese people speak Chinese (she understands most of it but their accent gives her goosebumps) but yes, we do speak Mandarin (with a different accent), but also speak Taiwanese, and that our characters are different, and how our culture is closer to the Japanese (only in some regards, my grandparents grew up during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, speak Japanese fluently in addition to three other languages, and essentially admire Japanese culture), that our mannerisms and etiquette are different from the Chinese (we have it, they don’t), that Taiwan is de facto independent, that China has 1800 missiles pointed at us, that we have our own President, aboriginal tribes, that she’s part Dutch ( I am 1/32 Dutch) because my great-great-great-great-great grandfather was half Dutch and had a pointy nose and was six feet tall (which did me no good since I am 5’1”), how the Portuguese and Dutch colonized Taiwan.

But I won’t bore you with the details.