Taiwan, my homeland

Every now and then I get a stab of sharp nostalgia for my homeland, a place half constructed out of my own unfulfilled fantasies and half from real experiences. For instance when I listen to the radio station online Voice of Taipei, Mandarin voices accented in that distinctive Taiwanese way fill the air and flood my eardrums. Simultaneously, feelings of homesickness would wash over me. Homesickness? My home is here, what exactly am I yearning for?

I think this is my primordial memory. I was born there after all, and was listening to voices like that since from the womb. From the age of 0 to 5 too, that was my entire universe. Moving to America was not nearly as traumatic as it might have been for many other immigrant children precisely because I was still so young and also because I was always coccooned safely within my family. Nonetheless, I am beginning to suspect that this displacement was still fairly traumatic on some subconscious level.

It's also true of course that the grass is greener on the other side of the pasture. While I am here in the US, I experience the good and the bad. Whereas when I think of Taiwan, my lovely Taipei, all I can recall are such things like sumptious night market delicacies, beautiful gossamer bakeries, bright and inviting department stores filled to the brim with cute outfits, even the ever familiar and to me, near and dear to my heart, the hawkings of the local vendors.

Knowing all this however does not dampen my longing to visit and stay once again, in the country of my birth.