Background: When I lived in Taiwan as a youth (1988-92), I worked at a local shipping company, and “Susie” was in the sales department – outside sales (calling on clients, not just handling the paperwork in the office), an unusual job for a woman. She had an untamed, Amazonian beauty (how surprised I was, seeing her years later [as narrated below], to find her shorter than I am). Back in the day, I had feebly hit on her a couple of times, unaware or uninterested in the fact that she was living with a guy; but then I actually started to hang out with her and her boyfriend, “Joe,” at their bar, named Joe’s Place. He was a lot of fun. By the time I left Taiwan, they were married, and she was pregnant. During my 2010 research trip to Taiwan, I got in touch with her again. She explained that she was divorced from Joe, who’d become a journalist on the Mainland. Her son, whom she’d raised alone, had recently been killed in a car accident. What follows is the last diary entry of my 2010 trip.
Friday, April 16, 2010 – Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
The plan today was to have lunch with Susie, but she’d cheesed on me, fanged my gezi [‘released my pigeon,’ i.e., stood me up], by eleven, after I’d spent two days relishing the fantasy of being her hero, her shoulder to cry on, her saving ray of warmth.
There was a vague fallback position of my hanging around until fiveish and trying her again. So I ran downtown for a fast Mos Burger (the 五彩 burger I wanted was apparently a seasonal thing, available only through last Sunday, when I’d decided I loved it). I read in my Times a review of Kick Ass, and the old Spontaneity kicked in. I began playing the game of Taipei one last time. I feinted toward Taida Hospital; then I doubled back to the Station, buying a shirt and a 方大同 CD in record time and then taking the [Taipei Metro] to magnetic 西門町, where I checked out all five theatres and finally bought a ticket at the old 絕色, with only an hour to kill. I was enjoying myself and also enjoying childish revenge on Susie (ditching her back, in other words), while feeling a little guilty about it at the same time.
I loved the film.
I called her from the stairwell on the way out. She invited me to Neihu, where I would have enough time to be with her for five minutes before having to rush off to keep my dinner date with [another couple of friends]. Rockpile’s ‘Girls Talk,’ recently my manic soundtrack, began to play in my head again, and I raced off to the Ximending station [of the Metro], out the Ban/Nan [line], transferring to the Wen/Hu [line], up those long escalators (where I saw the best leg effect ever: transparent black stockings over long anorexic legs, coming up well above the knee and terminating in a fancy pattern just an inch or two below the hem of the young lady’s short shorts, leaving an thin band of exposed flesh between the shorts and the darker pattern at the top of the stockings) since you’re not supposed to see the fancy pattern at all, it was like she was wearing her underwear around her calves)
The little car curved and sped, and I ran down the escalator, and soon there was Susie, and all was forgiven, and we hugged, and we walked back to her yingchou [social meeting with clients], and she observed that I wasn’t a boy anymore, and she smelled of drink, and we reached the yingchou, where I worked the group for a while in the customary manner.
Five minutes passed, and Susie said she’d drive me all the way to Nangang for my big dinner. We got in her Toyota, and she began telling me about how she’d raised her son alone – raised him to be her ex-husband’s son, even sending him to the mainland to spend Chinese New Year’s with his dad. She soon realized that (but could not understand why) her ex-husband wasn’t acting like a father; so she stopped sending the boy to him. When Joe took five days to return to Taiwan to see his body, she gave up trying to understand.
But she didn’t give up trying to return her son to her ex-husband’s family, where Chinese Culture deemed he belonged. I listened with no clear idea what this meant, whether he would take their name or be interred among their graves. No one, not her ex, nor anyone from his family, has come to claim the boy and take him from her. And yet she thinks she must return him to them.
She was crying.
Her Singaporean boyfriend called and at the end of their conversation she said ‘I love you’ to him three times. I’d never heard a Chinese woman say it to her man, not even once.
Susie said I should go home and raise my daughter, and that’s what I’m going to do tomorrow.
Yellow Crane in the Rain 
Honest and vivid…I’ve found that most people I’ve lost touch with over the years don’t want to be reintegrated into my life, even momentarily. It’s as if it would be an affront to who they’ve become in my absence. I’ve been successful in only about one in five attempts. The one that works is golden (if again only momentarily), making up for the silence from the others and hinting that contact with those others might have been disheartening if somehow I’d pushed, as it appears you did in 2010, past the initial reluctance. Thanks for showing what that can be like.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for your comment. I’m glad the posting was helpful in some way.
Of course, the above encounter lasted all of an hour, and we’re not in touch anymore.
LikeLike