I had visited Taiwan twice before, once on a Korean bus tour with my mom and a second time with my partner as a rendezvous point between Malaysia and the United States.

Daily life in Taipei is gentler, if sweatier, than in New York City. In my home country, I avoided movie theatres, restaurants and subways for fear of Covid-19, or another gunman, or another man who decides to attack East Asian-looking women. With my face, I blend in in Taipei.

Along with 1,200 other students, 900 of whom are international, I enrolled at the Mandarin Training Center at National Taiwan Normal University in late August. This fall term there are ten of us in the beginner Mandarin class, and we are almost all Asian.

 

0 FOREIGNER

I walk to the grocery on a Sunday night, examining the shadows for a sluggish motion of glinting bronze—hungry cockroaches that appear after all the city’s restaurants close. I anticipate the cashier’s inevitable string of questions. Rehearse the explanation in my head: 我是外國人, wo shi waiguoren. 我是韓國人, wo shi hanguoren. Do you have membership? the cashiers always ask. No, I shake my head, meiyou.

Taiwanese people are friendly, and they are friendly to foreigners especially when compared with mainlanders, I am told again and again. But if you look Taiwanese, then you are simply treated like a local. This time the clerk asks a third, mysterious question. I shake my head. Curiosity or impatience floats across the clerk’s brow.

• Tags: Esther Kim, Issue 30, Taiwan