Photo: My maternal grandmother and me in 1981

One of the reasons I wanted to learn Mandarin was so that I could converse more easily with my grandparents, but by the time I arrived in Taiwan on a language scholarship, three out of four of them had passed away. I came here anyway, thinking that if I knew more about Taiwan, I’d know more about them -- and about myself in turn.

When I first arrived in Taipei, I was surprised by how many grandparents I saw out with their grandkids, playing with them in the park, taking them to school or patiently holding their hands as they toddled slowly over an uneven sidewalk. I have to admit that I got a little jealous watching them. I wondered what it feels like to be able to take your place as a link in a cultural and generational chain for granted. As the first person in my family to be born and raised in the US, I sometimes feel like I represent a mutation in my family tree.

I found it hard to communicate with my grandparents. My limited Mandarin and their limited English stood in the way of conversation. Their lives were shaped by events that I also had a difficult time comprehending. My paternal grandparents moved to Taiwan from China in 1949 as refugees from the Communists; they left behind a son, who died during the Cultural Revolution. My maternal grandmother, in turn, lost much of her family in an earthquake that rocked the middle of Taiwan when she was a little girl. Most of their lives took place in a world that was completely different from mine. I had very little sense of their history and they rarely talked about it. Maybe they thought it was better not to dwell on the past or perhaps they believed I wouldn’t be able to understand. 

For most of my childhood, I rarely spoke to any of them, except for a few awkward phone conversations that tested the limits of my Mandarin. When I was 23, both my grandfathers passed away; my paternal grandmother died two years later.  My parents were surprised at the depth of my grief, because my grandparents’ deaths hadn’t been unexpected (they all live passed 80) and they’d been a small part of my life since my adolescence. But that was exactly why I mourned.

But I wasn’t completely disconnected from my grandparents. My waipo, or maternal grandmother, took care of my brother and me when my Mom went back to work. She broke up squabbles, bandaged our scrapes and made sure we didn’t run off when distracted by squirrels in the park. I’ve always felt a special attachment to my waipo, even when I began to feel the cultural and generational gaps between us more keenly.

My waipo grew up in a time and place when you didn’t earn money to spend it -- you kept as much of it as you could to a hedge against catastrophe. But she was always generous with financial gifts to her grandchildren. For my 14th birthday, she gave me $100. I immediately bought a pair of oxblood Dr. Martens. My waipo was aghast. “You’ve spent every dollar?” she asked me in dismay. I still feel guilty when I think about it. Never mind that it was the mid-1990s and I matched those Dr. Martens with everything, from jeans to semi-formal dresses, until they wore out. The way my grandmother looked when she’d realized how easily I’d spent her gift made me feel careless, not just with the cash, but with her feelings.

Moving to Taiwan, however, didn’t magically unlock some understanding of what my grandparents’ lives were like. Taipei has changed a lot in the last 40 years, both physically and culturally. Trendy nightclubs and boutiques stand where my grandparents saw farmers at work in rough coir raincoats. Learning Mandarin also didn’t turn my waipo and me into confidantes, as I had fantasized it would. But I became more comfortable talking to her. When she visited Taiwan last year (she now lives in Vancouver), she made sure to give me plenty of grandmotherly advice (“Eat rice with every meal, otherwise you’ll never feel full.” “Sleep with the fan on, it’ll keep the mosquitoes away.” “Your dress was $70? If you look hard enough you can buy a pair of good trousers for $4.”). When I choked on a sip of water, she admonished me to be more careful and told me about her older brother who choked to death in his sleep. After a minute, she added “Bad things happen to you in your sleep. Especially when you’re old.” I looked over at her and saw that her eyes were twinkling.

I realized that for all of our differences, my waipo and I share something in common: a morbid sense of humor. (We also both like knitting.)

I sometimes wonder what my grandparents who have passed on would have thought of me moving to Taiwan. In fact, I wonder what they thought of me, period, since they never told me. I know Asian grandparents don’t have a reputation for being verbally affectionate (though some certainly are), but I know they loved me, even if we were mysteries to one another. Many of the best parts of my life are the direct result of their sacrifices and the care they put into raising their families. I hope that with the way I live my life, I can show them my gratitude.