Where are you from?
I don't really know how to answer this question.
I've gone back and forth between Taiwan and the U.S. my whole life. In Taiwan, I lived in the north, though I visited the south often enough that it feels familiar, too. My years in the U.S. have been more scattered: Midwest, West Coast, now the East Coast, with stretches in the South every year. I was born in Taiwan and lived there for over a decade, but the more recent chapters of my life have all unfolded in the U.S. I still think in Celsius and refuse to use Fahrenheit (I will die on this hill), though I've given in and switched to pounds for weight and feet and inches for height.
What am I, culturally speaking? The answer shifts depending on who's in the room. Around Americans who grew up on Sunday Night Football and backyard barbecues, I feel distinctly Taiwanese. Around people who've spent most of their lives in Taiwan or mainland China, who default to Mandarin, who still track pop culture from that side of the world, I feel American. These days, I read as American to most people. Chinese folks I meet in the U.S. often assume I don't speak Mandarin. They tell me I have no Chinese accent when I speak English. They're surprised when they find out I listen to Mandopop and can speak, read, and write in Mandarin without trouble.
Whenever I meet someone else who doesn't have a clean answer to the question "Where are you from?", I enjoy hearing their backstory. Our stories sometimes rhyme, but they're never identical. Moving around creates variability that's hard to replicate.
The ambiguity comes with gifts and griefs. When I think about where I want to settle, I don't feel the gravitational pull of a hometown or the weight of family ties anchoring me to a single place. That can feel like freedom, and sometimes it is. But the other side of it is a persistent sense of not quite belonging anywhere. I feel lucky that my parents still spend a good part of the year living in the U.S., so I have somewhere to go home to over the holidays.
I don't get homesick easily. But after four years away from Taiwan, the longing does catch up with me.
On my last visit in 2023, my parents and I were emptying out our old apartment to sell it. It's sold now (a relief, practically speaking) but strange to realize that the next time I visit, I won't have a place to stay that's ours. During that same trip, I went down to Tainan to see family. My grandpa didn't remember me anymore. Alzheimer's has taken that from him. The humid air still wrapped around me the same way, the motorcycles still weaved through traffic, the neon lights still buzzed, and the food stalls still sold glutinous rice triangles late into the night. My uncles and aunts had aged. I heard about their health problems and felt a jolt of surprise, as if this shouldn't be happening to them yet, and then I remembered how much time had passed. Every time I visit, I'm caught off guard by how much older everyone looks. They probably think the same about me. They told me it feels like yesterday I was just a kid.
I spent time with my mother's side of the family. My cousins there aren't much older than me, but we'd been apart for so long that our lives felt like they sat in completely different worlds.
Back in Taipei, I walked through the park in front of our old apartment building. I sat on the swing, maybe annoying some kids who were waiting to use it, and just took everything in. Across from the park, the storefront that used to face us had changed hands twice since we moved in. Both times, it had been a supermarket.
There's a Chinese saying: 「景物依舊，人事已非」. The scenery stays the same; the people have changed. That's the feeling. I guess this is part of growing up.