Notes: I wrote a 3500-word memoir for my writing class that focuses on autobiography and memoir. This assignment required at least five sources because it required a research component. The last section of this memoir is heavily based on what I wrote for The Tech.
Prologue:
November 24th, 2015
Beep. Beep. Beep. Half-asleep, I turned off my alarm right away. The time was 6:00 AM. As a committed member of a Taipei American School volunteer organization called Orphanage Club, I had to arrive at school by 6:30 AM for the Hunger Day Donation Drive. If it wasn’t for Orphanage Club, my instincts would have been to hit the snooze button and go back to sleep. Today was different. Within a minute, my enthusiasm for community service helped charge my batteries as I went from a walking zombie to an Energizer Bunny. Today is the day to make the world a better place through baby steps, I thought to myself.
After setting up the booth, I sat in my chair, watching the gradual stream of teachers and students enter the main entrance. “Donate to Oxfam to end world hunger!” I yelled repeatedly, trying to convince as many people to chip in a dollar or two. My voice became hoarse, but I didn’t mind. Seeing the plastic containers filled with bills and coins made my heart beam with joy.
I went throughout the rest of the school day being optimistic about how I as a twelve-year-old was ending world hunger, unaware that two weeks later I would receive news that would turn my world upside down.
Denial: A common defense mechanism used to protect oneself from the hardship of considering an upsetting reality
“Vivian, we might leave Taiwan and move back to the U.S. next year,” my mom told me as she helped me get ready for the middle school candlelight dance.
I knew that my family would return to the U.S. at some point because my dad worked as an expatriate for a pharmaceutical company. Our family had no compelling reason to stay in Taiwan since we had no relatives here. Sure, I was American and still told people that the United States was my home, but I loved living in the bustling city of Taipei and attending the international school. I already spent a third of my life in Taiwan.
My mom’s announcement was no surprise, yet I refused to accept what I had just heard.
I could hear my voice rising. “What do you mean? I thought we were going to stay in Taiwan until I finished eighth grade,” I protested.
“Well, Daddy’s company wants him to move back a year earlier,” my mom replied.
“Please don’t tell me this is the last time I will get to be at the candlelight dance,” I implored.
“This may be the last candlelight dance,” my mom said.
Anger: a generalized and undirected feeling, manifesting as a shorter temper or a loss of patience
After the dance, I still clung to the hope that I had another year in Taiwan. Looking back, it was around this time that I entered the five stages of grief. The initial stages of grief comprise of one’s refusal to accept the unideal circumstances, while the ultimate stage involves coming to terms with the situation. Although the model has been criticized for being oversimplified, the psychologist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross acknowledges that the journey from denial to acceptance is rather nonlinear and comes with recurring challenges.
It wasn’t until a couple of months later when my dad made the official announcement that I actually believed what my mom said, yet I still did not welcome this change. I ranted to my mom about not being able to live in a city. I wrote diary entries complaining about American public schools as I thought of packed classrooms and mediocre teachers. But what made me most upset was leaving behind Orphanage Club, a volunteer organization that not only helped orphans and underprivileged people in Taiwan, but also in other countries.
Whenever I participated in Orphanage Club’s wide range of activities, a magical feeling arose inside of me: a sense of empowerment from the fact that my actions made a difference in the world. To this day, I still remember the warm, playful atmosphere when I participated in the Chungyi Orphanage outing. Seeing the young boy’s face brighten up when we ran down the slope together made me smile. Even though the kid was naughty and mischievous, at the end of the day it felt good knowing that he had fun spending time with me. I also loved that the club advisors, Mr. Arnold and Mrs. Koh, always showed up to every single meeting and volunteer event, which inspired me to help the middle school chapter thrive and grow.
I will never forget the time when Mr. Arnold held up a neatly handwritten letter for everyone to see at the club meeting. “This girl was on the brink of dropping out of high school because her dad passed away and her mom’s income wasn’t enough to pay for her tuition. Because of Orphanage Club’s funds, however, we were able to pay her tuition right before the deadline. This is why we keep doing what we do.” When I heard what he said, I knew that I mattered and belonged in the club because my actions had a direct impact on individual lives.
The reasons that I experienced great happiness in life can be explained using Tal Ben-Shahar’s happiness archetype that consists of two parts: pleasure and meaning. True meaning not only requires having goals with intrinsic motivation, but also needs “meaning on the specific level of our daily existence as well.” By connecting my various actions in Orphanage Club from participating in fundraisers to teaching English for the visually impaired, I could see all the puzzle pieces come together to make a beautiful picture of my life.
But the visual masterpiece I created began to have cracks. As I thought about my dad’s announcement, a feeling of dread overtook me: I would no longer be part of Orphanage Club. The idea of having to tell my club advisors that I would not return for the next school year was frightening, so I kept delaying the process until I couldn’t maintain this façade anymore. One day in late April, Mrs. Koh called me to have a private conversation with her outside of the room. My heart started racing. She probably knew that I hadn’t filled out the officer application form for the next year.
After she asked me why I left the recent work session early, my voice started to tremble. “I am not coming back. I am moving back to the U.S.,” I said as tears started to cloud my vision. I tried holding back these emotions, but I exploded like a water balloon and began to sob.
Bargaining: a stage in which someone seeks some measure of control over their situation
A month after I told my club advisors about the news, I sat in my bedroom, brooding about the inevitable fact that I was going to leave Taiwan in July. Desperate to stay, I suggested that my piano teacher could act as my guardian while my parents and brother lived in the U.S. Unsurprisingly, my mom rejected the idea and thought I was joking, but I was serious. Leaving Taiwan meant ripping away part of my identity that came from Orphanage Club. Did I love Taiwan more than my parents?
Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan coined the term topophilia, which is when someone has a strong bond for a place. Topophilia comes from place attachment, a concept in which a person personally identifies with a place. One source of attachment comes from sociocultural factors since living in a place with a unified culture can lead to emotional significance. Place is a key component of an individual’s self-identity during childhood because the physical environment can influence how children perceive their future selves.
In hindsight, the primary reason I was unhappy came from the fact that the move disrupted a self-identity that I had developed during my time in Taiwan. It was obvious that there were volunteer organizations in the U.S., but the question of whether my future self could continue achieving my current life goal was put on hold. I ignored the idea of embracing change until I came across a book titled Who Moved My Cheese? sitting on my shelf. Wanting to avoid the cumbersome task of packing my boxes, I decided to read the self-help book that discussed being open-minded about the future.
While reading the book, I knew right away that Haw was more likable than Hem because Haw decided to find cheese elsewhere, whereas Hem simply waited for the cheese to come back. It wasn’t until I reached the middle that I noticed I was Hem the whole time. The realization stung and made me ashamed. Did I need a book to tell me that I was going about this the wrong way the whole time?
After processing what I had read, I told my mom, “I am glad that you bought that book for me,” I said, trying to sound as bright as possible. My mom smiled, possibly relieved that it seemed like I was embracing change with wide, open arms for once. But that feeling of acceptance was fleeting. Reading a self-help book wasn’t going to change my mind overnight. When I went back to my bedroom and stared at the empty shelves around me, the overwhelming feeling of loss made me nauseous. This apartment will be empty by the end of the month. I was back to where I had started.
Depression: the most immediately understandable of Kubler-Ross’s stages with predictable symptoms such as sadness, fatigue, and anhedonia.
The first year in the U.S. was miserable. I went through the school year with a few close friends and struggled to find a club that was the same as Orphanage Club. I was unaware that I was experiencing reverse culture shock, a situation in which expatriates returning to their home country struggle to readjust. Although returning to one’s home country appears to be a smooth process, in reality, more than half of people say that it took 3 to 12 months for their lives to be normal again. Twelve months may seem like a long time, but that period wasn’t even enough for me to fully readjust.
My current school had a large volunteering club, though I refused to join after hearing that my classmates tracked volunteer hours and did boring tasks like sorting library books. What was the point of doing volunteer work that didn’t serve the neediest? I tried participating in a couple of volunteer activities, though they lacked the positive energy and supportive mentorship that I experienced before. I missed Mr. Arnold’s friendly voice, saying, “Come back, we need you at the next work session!” Now, I could leave the volunteer activity at any moment and no one would notice or care that I vanished.
The pleasant aspects of American suburbia that I had missed while living in Taiwan no longer mattered to me when I returned. I did not care that the houses around me had nice, trimmed green lawns with gardens that grew beautiful flowers. I hated living in Danville, a town where I was surrounded by endless rows of houses that reminded me of the dull and repetitive days I lived here: go to school, do homework, practice piano and violin, sleep, repeat.
Stuck in my cul-de-sac, I was now cut off from all the five senses that I once used to explore my surroundings, whether it was tasting the cold grass jelly that smoothly slid down my throat or smelling the savory scallion pancakes that made my mouth water. Despite living in a community with a large Chinese population, I found it difficult to connect with my roots. Gone were the days where I could easily immerse myself in the culture, whether it seeing the bright red lanterns in the local temple or taking part in local festivals.
Without Orphanage Club, I struggled to find meaning in life as I no longer felt like I was achieving my goal of helping others. When I reopened the farewell scrapbook that the Orphanage Club officers made for me and read their heartfelt words of appreciation, I was on the verge of tears. How did I go from being a role model in the club to a student that was barely involved in anything besides studying? The pillars of passion that I once built had all but crumbled. I lost my social reputation for being an active member of community service and was back to nothing. I entered the second semester of the school year still stuck in the bottomless pit of the five stages of grief, failing to enter the state of acceptance. The reality was that it took me a couple more years to fully move on.
Acceptance: a recognition of reality while no longer protesting or struggling against it.
Five years after moving back to the U.S., my perception of Danville significantly changed. I still lived around houses that look like carbon copies of one other, but I no longer viewed them with contempt. Instead, I grew to love the quiet and calm nature of the town. When I hiked up a neighboring hill and saw a panorama of my community for the first time, I entered in a state of awe. I was fascinated by how tiny the world looked as thousands of tiny houses dotted the grassy, green hills while the breeze gently caressed my cheeks and the sun rays shone on me. Never had I felt this still and peaceful before.
As I stared out into the horizons, I thought of how the town of Danville was the world I came from, an answer that I would have never thought of saying when I had first arrived here. Danville was the place was where I spent my adolescent years undergoing a significant change from a middle schooler who solely focused on volunteering to a high school senior who developed a passion for science and STEM education. Danville was where I rekindled my long-lost passion for piano and classical music. When I took one last look at the scenery before walking down the hill, I could finally say with confidence that Danville was my home.
Epilogue:
Although I eventually became content with my life in Danville, my nostalgia for Taiwan came back whenever I flipped through the Taiwan travel guides at home. Instead of telling myself to stop feeling nostalgic, I wrote blog posts about small yet meaningful moments in Taiwan as a way to travel back in time, a quality that photos and videos can’t perfectly capture. Little did I know at that time that there was a Jewish philosopher called Walter Benjamin who also used writing as a way to fight off homesickness for his childhood home of Berlin while he was in exile.
Titled Berlin Childhood around 1900, the book consists of many vignettes about various objects and places in Benjamin’s childhood. He writes from a child’s perspective, using vivid language to recount his early memories that elicit the magical effects of wonder and innocence. In the introduction, Benjamin says that he says, “I sought to limit its effect through insight into the irretrievability—not the contingent biographical but the necessary social irretrievability – of the past.”
Like Benjamin, I wrote random episodes about Taiwan as an attempt to freeze distinctive moments that were becoming fainter over time, whether it was walking to buy Taiwanese egg crepes on a quiet Sunday morning or eating the soft, silky tofu pudding at the local dessert shop. Although Benjamin’s circumstances were very different from mine, we shared sentiments of grief for a place that felt like an extension of our physical selves.
After drifting away from my friends in Taiwan and the people in the Orphanage Club, I gradually realized that what I missed about Taiwan was the small, ordinary aspects. I longed for the sensations and experiences that I couldn’t find in the U.S.: the Coco passion fruit bubble tea that made my tongue buzz with joy, the warm, fresh soymilk from the local breakfast shack, the delightful chime I heard whenever I entered the Hi-Life convenient store.
As my memories of Taiwan became fainter, I romanticized Taiwan even more. My memories became distorted, highlighting all the good things that Taiwan offered. When I realized these gradual changes happening to my memories, I found it strange that my brain leaned towards inaccuracy, but psychology tells me otherwise.
The cognitive errors that come from reconstructing and forgetting certain memories lead to rosy retrospection, a process in which “people tend to think back of the past more fondly than what they experienced at that time.” The psychological reason for rosy retrospection is that people want memories to be consistent with the narrative that they want to hear and think of themselves, thus causing them to romanticize the past.
Despite being aware that I was prone to falling into the trap of cognitive biases, I still idealized Taiwan, ignoring the unbearable, hot summers or the stained concrete buildings from countless rainstorms. All I wanted was to go back to Taiwan because not only would I get to reconnect with my ancestor’s traditions and beliefs, but also relive my late childhood years.
My paradoxical feelings of belonging in Taiwan, yet struggling to call Taiwan “home” cannot be more eloquently described than in W. Somerset Maugham’s novel, The Moon and Sixpence. In Chapter 50, the narrator says, “Perhaps some deeprooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.”
For years, I wondered what was wrong with me. Why did I experience such strong homesickness for a place where I had no family members living there? I blended in with the locals, yet I was still considered an outsider because I was American and my mom came from mainland China. It wasn’t until I read these lines that I realized that where home was for me to decide, not others. My heart aches for Taiwan because it is the place where I fell in love with Chinese language and culture, ultimately shaping who I am today.
Without Taiwan, I would still be detached from my Chinese identity. The farther I am from Taiwan, the bigger the chasm between me and my ethnic identity grows. I flip through my old Chinese workbooks and fail to recognize some characters. I skim my elementary school Chinese textbooks and realize that I forgot so many traditional poems and stories. I mourn that I spent my entire time in Taiwan building my Chinese identity only to lose it after moving back to the states. Am I still Chinese enough?
I still occasionally think about Taiwan. Taiwan is more than a place to me; it is more like a loved one with whom I had a complicated relationship in the past. Taiwan reminds me of an imaginary sibling that I found annoying at times growing up, but I end up missing dearly after leaving home. I play songs on my Spotify playlist called Taiwan Nostalgia that evokes the calm ambience in the DONUTES Bakery shop and Eslite Bookstore that I went to numerous times. I watch music videos of my favorite songs by Taiwanese artists like Fish Leong, letting the sentimental feelings of loss envelope me like a blanket. Still reminiscing about Taiwan, I watch Taiwanese teen films such as Our Times to relive those unspoiled golden days. When the credits start rolling, I remain transfixed by the touching ending that makes me internally cry about how I cannot go back in time ever again.
I know that my efforts to recreate these experiences are futile, yet I still find beauty in nostalgia because it is the ephemeral nature of childhood that makes these moments worth remembering. So I let random thoughts about Taiwan pop into my head when I walk down Dorm Row or bike on Massachusetts Avenue. I may be more than 7500 miles separated from Taiwan, but there is one thing I am sure of: Taiwan will always stay in my heart, no matter where I go.
Bibliography:
Benjamin, Walter, and Howard Eiland. Berlin Childhood around 1900. Belknap Press, 2006.
Ben-Shahar, Tal. Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment. McGraw-Hill, 2007.
Lieberman, Charlotte. “Why We Romanticize the Past.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 2 Apr. 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/smarter-living/why-we-romanticize-the-past.html.
Kübler-Ross Elisabeth, and Ira Byock. On Death & Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy & Their Own Families, Scribner, NY, NY, 2019.
Maugham, W. Somerset. The Moon and Sixpence. Dover Pub., 2006.
“Reverse Culture Shock - Introduction.” U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of State, https://2009-2017.state.gov/m/fsi/tc/c55963.htm.
Tyrrell P, Harberger S, Siddiqui W. Stages of Dying. [Updated 2021 Apr 6]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2021 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507885/
Wolf, K.L., S. Krueger, and K. Flora. 2014. Place Attachment and Meaning - A Literature Review. In: Green Cities: Good Health (www.greenhealth.washington.edu). College of the Environment, University of Washington.
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