Hours after my fall semester exams ended, I hopped into a time machine, not to go back and re-take my finals, but to make my parents happy. I flew 13 hours into the future for a two-week trip to Taiwan, effectively losing half a day and half of my Winter Break. It was the first time that my entire family -- my parents, my brother and I -- would be returning together.
I use "return" loosely. Neither my brother nor I have ever lived there. It is our homeland by blood and family only. We have only experienced fragments of it before: homemade pastries, stories from our parents and Chinese school once a week, which served more as a social -- rather than educational -- scene.
Some of our relatives used to visit us when we were younger. Sadly, I can only remember feeling stupid because I was too shy to use what little Chinese I knew.
I should have been excited, but I have never been what one would call "adventurous." The prospect of missing out on time with best friends that I had not seen for months in favor of spending time with family members who thought I were idiotic seemed unfulfilling.
In some ways, it was. To the amusement of my relatives, my hunger was not -- and never will be -- satiated with fried squid eyeballs. Luckily, this was the only delicacy that my stomach could not stomach. I devoured everything else that was placed in front of me. Although I usually demand to know exactly what it is that I am consuming, for some reason, I didn't think this would be a good policy to have in Taiwan. Otherwise I might have died from starvation.
At one of our many large dinners, I asked my mother what was in the soup.
"You don't want to know," she said.
Furthermore, there was a matter of communicating what some ingredients or foods were. Certain foods that exist in Taiwan but cannot be found in the States obviously do not have a name, and so it became a problem for my parents to translate.
And so I embraced the adventure. The communication barrier became humorous as my relatives tried to use their simplest Chinese, and my brother and I also used simple Chinese -- though not by choice. Once, my brother was trying to explain that our immediate family had communication problems because we never say what we really mean or forget to call about things. Ironically though, he could not explain just what he meant.
"'Communication?' I think I've heard that English word before," my cousin said. "Maybe," she added, cocking her head to the side.
These conversations may not have been fruitful in actually enabling communication. After all, before fruit can grow, there must be roots. Fortunately for us, brushing away the dirt of our translation problems left us with family roots instead.
Rather than thinking that we were complete imbeciles, my Taiwanese relatives understood that we grew up differently, that we are as American as we are Chinese. We celebrate Chinese New Year, but we also acknowledge July 4th. They embraced us, and for the first time, I felt like I was part of a complete family. After 18 years of hearing my friends' stories of seeing their grandparents during the holidays, I am finally telling a story of my own.
Instead of turkey gracing the dinner tables, however, we had a spread of Chinese fruit, vegetables and desserts in front of my deceased grandfather's ashes. Ancestor worship is a traditional part of Chinese culture, but my brother and I had never participated before.
We left the dust and noise of the capital city Taipei (similar to New York or Tokyo) and drove to the mountains. Breathing in the fresh air, one is surrounded by rows of gardens that are actually grave sites and towers that hold Buddhist offerings and urns.
A garden grave site, which is an enclosed plot of land of perfectly pruned trees and an unburied casket, easily costs the same as an apartment because land is so valuable in Taiwan, a small island. As a result, a box in the towers is much cheaper, only slightly more expensive than the price of a new car. The towers are grand structures -- majestic but human, chilly from death but warm from the smell of incense and the presence of loved ones.
As we entered the tower where my family's remains are kept, we first saw a myriad of food offerings in front of a Buddhist statue. Traditionally, these are offerings made to the dead as a way of honoring them. Much as people care for their parents in their old age, it is one's responsibility to care for one's ancestors in the afterlife.
Obviously, the dead cannot actually eat the food. Is it left there to just rot away? Of course not -- that would be such a waste of money. The Chinese are far more practical than that. The food is eaten immediately after respects are paid upstairs to the deceased's ashes. While food is prohibited upstairs, it is allowed on the first floor -- conveniently, where the food is placed in front of the statues.
We first went to visit my great-grandmother, whom I never met. In fact, this was the first time I had heard of her. Nevertheless, I called her by her title like my cousins did, and listened to my uncle speak to her. He used a respectful tone, cracking jokes all the while, because that is the kind of person he is -- and his grandmother certainly knew that. She was -- is -- family. I know that now, as well.
I know my family is the type who sneaks food upstairs in the towers, even though it is against the rules. We sat on the couches in front of my grandfather's box, in which his urn is kept, eating from the six bags of food we brought. When the manager walked by, we hurriedly stuffed whatever we were holding into our mouths and threw containers behind the furniture. Stifling our laughter and hoping not to spew it all out, we fell silent so as to appear respectfully somber.
When the coast was clear, we resumed eating and our lively conversations with each other and with my grandfather. My aunt proceeded to tell me and my brother how our parents met, although they vehemently denied her version of the events.
Were we being disrespectful to the dead? Perhaps other visitors thought so (though we did not see any), but we were there to see our ancestors. Our family, both those living and those dead, was together for the first time.
My voyage into the time machine was not a loss after all. As I prepared to board the plane back, I realized I was gaining back those 13 hours. Though I could not get back those two weeks, I gained something better: roots that sprung up from ashes.
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