I ask what books she liked to read when she was younger. We’re sitting side-by-side on worn burgundy armchairs, mother and daughter, in a chain bookshop café in my English hometown. I’m chugging a hot chocolate with extra cream and marshmallows; not my typical morning café order at twenty-eight, but it feels comforting to re-order the only drink I’ve ever tried from here. As usual, Li orders a hot americano and spends ten minutes blowing on the drink’s surface until it’s cool enough to sip, although it still burns. When she tilts her head down to blow, I catch a glimpse of the inch of silvery grey hair growing from her roots. They contrast with her dark brown, almost black, hair. Li’s hair has looked like this, grey root to darker ends, for as long as I can remember.

I’m trying to repair our relationship. It might seem like an obvious question to ask your own mother—what do you like to read?—but the topic hadn’t come up before. Li is conversationally fluent in English, but it’s not her mother tongue like it is mine. I never saw her read when I was growing up.

Li’s answer to my question is “Sanmao”. There’s a pause. “She travelled, like me… When I was young, there was a book about the desert that I read a lot…” Li’s thought trails off and she stops blowing. She sets the mug back down on the table, a little too forcefully, spilling some over the edge and on to the table surface. She tells me that she’s going to the bathroom while the coffee cools down.

• Tags: Issue 40, Nat Ty, Sanmao, Taiwan