Roots I

This is how my journey began, trying to shed the lingering separation anxiety and chasing daylight across the Pacific at 35,000 ft. With sable peeking above almost every seat, I could've been back in high school math league again. Or some much more distant past, yet also more familiar.

What awaits me across the ocean? Old friends, or new alliances? My first time in Taiwan without the protection I've been accustomed to, what adventures will greet me? What perils (like the big one across the strait, armed to the teeth)? I can't wait to find out.

My dad only half guessed that he was being cajoled into picking me up by my stepmum, but his half-surprise mirrored mine. On the ride back to the little town where I spent the first decade of my life, I kept trying to reconcile the modernizing city with hazy and rundown memories. New and wider streets, taller and shinier buildings. Once our apartment building was the tallest around the turnabout; now it's the runt of the litter.

At least one thing remains constant. Not a star to be seen in the night sky of Taipei.

Pulling aside the beaded curtain, half a lifetime of memories flushed in before my eyes...

My brother's and my room, where I used to beat him up. He's always been bigger than me, but he never hit me back.

Our living room. It took (a lot of) my brother's blood spilled by the left divider for me to realize how much I loved him. I never hit him again.


My later room: furthest away from my parents' room, and the place of my first drive for independence.


Who's more racist, black people or white people?
Chinese people. 'Cause only we have a best selling toothpaste called "Black Man".