Taipei Quotes

I hope none of them ask about my spring break. They went to Taipei, the Bahamas, Harry Potter World. I stayed in the hood and saw a cop kill my friend.

On average, since the urge to kill myself isn't so strong that I actually kill myself, the world is worth living in.

Maybe part of fighting the unhappiness in this world is to seize happiness when we can.

And news flash- not speaking your language- in their own country- doesn't make anyone less intelligent than you

understand now that rejecting their wishes is not the same as rejecting them.

Why give me honey when you knew my future was diabetic?

They went to Taipei, the Bahamas, Harry Potter World. I stayed in the hood and saw a cop kill my friend.

He wanted to hide by shrinking past zero, through the dot at the end of himself, to a negative size, into an otherworld, where he would find a place— in an enormous city, too large to know itself, or some slowly developing suburb— to be alone and carefully build a life in which he might be able to begin, at some point, to think about what to do about himself.

When he heard laughter, before he could think or feel anything, his heart would already be beating like he’d sprinted twenty yards. As the beating slowly normalized he’d think of how his heart, unlike him, was safely contained, away from the world, behind bone and inside skin, held by muscles and arteries in its place, carefully off-center, as if to artfully assert itself as source and creator, having grown the chest to hide in and to muffle and absorb—and, later, after innovating the brain and face and limbs, to convert into productive behavior—its uncontrollable, indefensible, unexplainable, embarrassing squeezing of itself.

I don't care what baggage they dragged over the ocean. They have no right to make me carry it the rest of my life.

Traffic here is a human rights violation.

Maybe I'm always obsessed with the guy who isn't available, so I don't ever put myself on the line.

There's no such thing as "The One", she once said. They were at dinner in Taipei, with a supplier and his wife. The couple had been married forty years. The idea that there's just one person in the world you're meant to be with, it's illogical, she said. She'd had a few drinks and was enjoying her own loud thoughts. The math just doesn't work! Who you end up with, it's really just an accident of proximity.

It would take her thousands of steps to get anywhere, but she would get there easily, and when she arrived, in the present, it would seem like it had been a single movement that brought her there. Did existence ever seem worked for? One seemed simply to be here, less an accumulation of moments than a single arrangement continuously gifted from some inaccessible future.

The signs, newspapers, magazines are no longer random symbols. They're full of significance: doors, eyes, hands, men, meat, water, hearts, dagger-axes, earth, rain, trees, suns and moons, wood, fire, power, gold, and short-tail birds.

As the saying goes, 'People do not stay in favor a thousand days; flowers do not stay in bloom a hundred days.' Nobody can count on being happy and prosperous a whole lifetime.

After blearily looking at the internet a little, then peeing and brushing his teeth and washing his face, he lay in darkness on his mattress, finally allowing the simple insistence of the opioid, like an unending chord progression with a consistently unexpected and pleasing manner of postponing resolution, to accumulate and expand, until his brain and heart and the rest of him were contained within the same songlike beating—of another, larger, protective heart—inside of which, temporarily safe from the outside world, he would shrink into the lunar city of himself and feel and remember strange and forgotten things, mostly from his childhood.

I would die for my family if it came to it. I would emigrate to a foreign country and give up dancing to unwrap blood-soaked bandages every hour of every day if it meant food and shelter for my family. But because of them, I don’t have to.

We're breaking another taboo, talking about racism, but I've just broken a bigger one confronting that guy before the entire restaurant, instead of sticking to that Asian nonconfrontational thing. But these are rules meant to be broken. Something happens to a kid when they see their parent treated like that. Something happens to the parent.

1+1 is always 2. With her, 1+1 is exponential.

All's fair in love and war.

I snatch my body as well as my bad from Rick. My heart pounds in my throat. His hand and arm have branded themselves through the fabric of my clothes into my skin.

Ever the Brave Boar. I like it,

I have a confession," he murmurs between kisses. "That first day, sitting beside you in the van, I wanted to kiss you then." "Was that why you were such a jerk?" "Was I?" "Definitely. Where?" "Where what?" "Where did you want to kiss me?" His voice is husky. "Everywhere.

I tilt my head, reading without words. Us cutting our own path through the rock, until we merge with the larger river of life. The flow of water breaks my heart, but it also mends it again--everything art is supposed to do.

Paul thought of how they'd kept delaying buying plane tickets to visit his parents in Taiwan - in December, which was next month, he knew - as if in tacit understanding that their relationship wouldn't last that long. Paul felt himself trying to interpret the situation, as if there was a problem to be solved, but there didn't seem to be anything, or maybe there was, but he was three or four skill sets away from comprehension, like an amoeba trying to create a personal webpage using CSS.

In Taipei we had oyster omelets and stinky tofu at Shilin Night Market and discovered what is arguably the world's greatest noodle soup, Taiwanese beef noodle, chewy flour noodles served with hefty chunks of stewed shank and a meaty broth so rich it's practically a gravy. In Beijing we trekked a mile in six inches of snow to eat spicy hot pot, dipping thin slivers of lamb, porous wheels of crunchy lotus root, and earthy stems of watercress into bubbling, nuclear broth packed with chiles and Sichuan peppercorns. In Shanghai we devoured towers of bamboo steamers full of soup dumplings, addicted to the taste of the savory broth gushing forth from soft, gelatinous skins. In Japan we slurped decadent tonkotsu ramen, bit cautiously into steaming takoyaki topped with dancing bonito flakes and got hammered on whisky highballs.

The unindividualized, shifting mass of everyone else would be a screen, distributed throughout the city, onto which he'd project the movie of his uninterrupted imagination. Because he'd appear to, and be able to pretend he was, but never actually be a part of the mass, maybe he'd gradually begin to feel a kind of needless intimacy, not unlike being in the same room as a significant other and feeling affection without touching or speaking.

Paul thought of Taipei as a fifth season, or “otherworld,” outside, or in equal contrast with, his increasingly familiar and self-consciously repetitive life in America, where it seemed like the seasons, connecting in right angles, for some misguided reason, had formed a square, sarcastically framing nothing

Gradually, after being the target a few times of a similar capriciousness, which he discerned as default behavior for most people, and not liking it, Paul learned to not be more generous or enthusiastic or attentive that he could sustain regardless of his mood and to not talk to people if his only reason to was because he felt lonely or bored.

--and at every turn, he finds excuses to touch me, pushing money into my hand, running his palm down my back, around the curve of my waist.

He takes his time. A slow burn that builds and builds, until I am clawing at the stones and my back arches, and my toes splash and my body ripens under his grip.

I saw them, and I thought, maybe when you get that old, that’s when you find peace. Maybe the secret’s just living a fucking long time with the right people.

Nobody’s told me anything about anything,

I know,' said Erin, and described how she'd lately felt depressed in a new and scary way, which Paul also had felt lately and described as a sadness-based fear, immune to tone and interpretation, as if not meant for humans - more visceral than sadness, but unlike fear because it decreased heart rate and impaired the senses, causing everything to seem 'darker.

The late-afternoon sky, in Paul's peripheral vision, panoramic and mostly unobstructed, appeared rural or suburban, more indicative of forests and fields and lakes—of nature's vast connections, through the air and the soil, to more of itself—than of outer space, which was mostly what Paul thought of when beneath an urban sky, even in daytime, especially in Manhattan, between certain buildings, framing sunless zones of upper atmosphere, as if inviting space down to deoxygenate a city block.

Laura ordered a margarita, then sometimes turned her head 90 degrees, to her right, to stare outside—at the sidewalk, or the quiet street—with a self-consciously worried expression, seeming disoriented and shy in a distinct, uncommon manner indicating to Paul an underlying sensation of “total yet failing” (as opposed to most people’s “partial and successful”) effort, in terms of the social interaction but, it would often affectingly seem, also generally, in terms of existing. Paul had gradually recognized this demeanor, the past few years, as characteristic, to some degree, of every person, maybe since middle school, with whom he’d been able to form a friendship or enter a relationship (or, it sometimes seemed, earnestly interact and not feel alienated or insane). After

I stir under Zavier's arm, which shifts to my hip. Heavy and intimate and possessive. The subtle scent of him, cologne, sweat, male, reaches my nose. His body is imprinted all over mine--and what does this mean? I'd never been the focus of such ravenous want. Never imagined how irresistible its pull. Sex isn't the barely tolerable duty of procreation like Mom always insinuated. It's two human beings fitting seamlessly together. Maybe it was the dancer in me, but I'd known instinctively how to move--

As a waiter served their medium-rare steaks and, on multicolored rice, cooked into fetal positions, eight medium-large shrimp, Paul realized with some confusion that he might have overreacted. Staring at the herbed butter, flecked and large as a soap sample, on his steak, he was unsure what, if he had overreacted, had been the cause. It occurred to him that, in the past, in college, he would have later analyzed this, in bed, with eyes closed, studying the chronology of images—memories, he’d realized at some point, were images, which one could crudely arrange into slideshows or, with effort, sort of GIFs, maybe—but now, unless he wrote about it, storing the information where his brain couldn’t erase it, place it behind a toll, or inadvertently scramble its organization, or change it gradually, by increments smaller than he could discern, without his knowledge, so it became both lost and unrecognizable, he probably wouldn’t remember most of this in a few days and, after weeks or months, he wouldn’t know it had been forgotten, like a barn seen from inside a moving train that is later torn down, its wood carried elsewhere on trucks.

- ¿No te parece a veces que vivir en el mundo es como una mierda? - ¿A qué te refieres? - dijo Paul lentamente. - A ver... que lo que el mundo puede darnos no basta para satisfacernos. - No -dijo Paul al cabo de unos diez segundos, y se tapó la cara con las manos-. Quiero decir... el mundo está bien, y me baso en pruebas, porque no me he suicidado. Si me suicidara... podría decir que el mundo es malo, en general. - Definitivamente, vamos. - En general -dijo Paul sin apartar las manos-. Como las ganas de suicidarme no son tan fuertes como para que me suicide, el mundo es un lugar en el que vale la pena vivir.

All my films are about Hong Kong." Wong Kar Wai once told me, "even if they're set in Argentina." While many in the West saw Happy Together primarily as a love story, his compatriots saw it something more timely and relevant: Wong grappling with the meaning of the handover to China. They knew it wasn't coincidental that the film should open in Hong Kong one month before that historical transfer of power. Nor was it coincidental that it should begin with a shot of Hong kong passports and end with Tony Leung's Lai on a train in Taipei, not Hong Kong, heading into an indeterminate future as the soundtrack plays Danny Chung's cover of the pop song "Happy Together" --a title that could be read as predicting a successful union, or as a slash of bitter irony. Even the movie's defining image, the aerial shot of water rushing down Iguazu Falls, is layered with political intimations that cut in different directions. At once thrillingly spectacular and patently dangerous--Chris Doyle, who's terrified of heights, shot it while hanging out of a chopper--the roaring waters that combine in these falls are an expression of the inexorably rushing power of reunion that can be seen as both a symbol of great strength or the downward pull of destruction.

-Y ahora qué hacemos - dijo Paul cuando unos veinte minutos más tarde se marchaban del parque. Después de dar unos pasos en la calle, Daniel miró distraídamente en las dos direcciones y, con la vista al frente y expresión preocupada, dobló a la derecha en la acera. -Teníamos un objetivo específico, eso lo recuerdo -dijo Paul-. ¿Cuál era? - No lo sé - dijo Daniel al cabo de unos segundos. - Acabábamos de comentarlo. - Me acuerdo de algo -dijo Daniel con aire ausente. - Ah, sí , vender libros. - Vamos -dijo Daniel. - Habíamos olvidado nuestro propósito y acabamos de recuperarlo -dijo Paul sonriendo-. No teníamos ningún objetivo, pero aun así seguíamos avanzando al mismo ritmo. - Dios -dijo Daniel en voz baja.

Something staticky and paranormally ventilated about the air, which drifted through a half-open window, late one afternoon, caused a delicately waking Paul, clutching a pillow and drooling a little, to believe he was a small child in Florida, in a medium-size house, on or near winter break. He felt dimly excited, anticipating a hyperactive movement of his body into a standing position, then was mostly unconscious for a vague amount of time until becoming aware of what seemed to be a baffling non sequitur—and, briefly, in its mysterious approach from some eerie distance, like someone else’s consciousness—before resolving plainly as a memory, of having already left Florida, at some point, to attend New York University. After a deadpan pause, during which the new information was accepted by default as recent, he casually believed it was autumn and he was in college, and as he felt that period’s particular gloominess he sensed a concurrent assembling, at a specific distance inside himself, of dozens of once-intimate images, people, places, situations. With a sensation of easily and entirely abandoning a prior context, of having no memory, he focused, as an intrigued observer, on this assembling and was surprised by an urge, which he immediately knew he hadn’t felt in months, or maybe years, to physically involve himself—by going outside and living each day patiently—in the ongoing, concrete occurrence of what he was passively, slowly remembering. But the emotion dispersed to a kind of nothingness—and its associated memories, like organs in a lifeless body, became rapidly indiscernible, dissembling by the metaphysical equivalent, if there was one, of entropy—as he realized, with some confusion and an oddly instinctual reluctance, blinking and discerning his new room, which after two months could still seem unfamiliar, that he was somewhere else, as a different person, in a much later year.

A partir de un determinado momento, advirtió Paul vagamente, la tecnología había pasado a señalarle únicamente el carácter ineludible y próximo de la nada. En vez de liberar nanobots en el torrente sanguíneo para reparar las cosas más rápidamente de lo que se deterioraban, implantar pequeños computadores en el cerebro de la gente o aplicar otros métodos que Paul había descubierto en la Wikipedia con intención de aplazar la muerte hasta convertirla en ese ente lejano y menguante y casi inexistente que entonces era la vida- y para que la vida, para los humanos inmortales, se convirtiera en la diversión preponderante que entonces era la muerte-, la tecnología parecía abocada a eliminar la vida para siempre cumpliendo incontroladamente su única función: convertir la materia, animada o inanimada, en materia computerizada con el único objeto, al parecer, de aumentar su funcionamiento hasta que el universo fuera un único ordenador. La tecnología, una abstracción indetectable en la realidad concreta, estaba llevando a cabo su tarea concreta, intuyó Paul débilmente mientras le acariciaba el pelo a Erin, gracias a una mano de obra humana, creciente y cada vez más entregada que, en el transcurso de cientos de generaciones, iba recibiendo lo que parecían anticipos (desde los pies a los coches pasando por las bicicletas, desde la cara a Internet hasta los tablones de anuncios) a cambio de convertir una cantidad suficiente de materia en materia computerizada para que los ordenadores pudieran ir construyéndose a sí mismos.

It was spring, not winter or autumn, Paul thought with some lingering confusion. He listened to the layered murmur of wind against leaves, familiarly and gently disorienting as a terrestrial sound track, reminding people of their own lives, then opened his MacBook—sideways, like a hardcover book—and looked at the internet, lying on his side, with his right ear pressed into his pillow, as if, unable to return to sleep, at least in position to hear what, in his absence, might be happening there.

Hope springs eternal—a truism for jilted lovers and for the children of dying parents. We convince ourselves the inevitable isn’t, and when it is upon us, we rail and plead. Or deny. Busy with preparation and travel, I had pushed away my worry; now that I was here, at midmorning in Taipei, when less than a day before I’d been in the chilly Bay Area, my new reality struck me.

...and sleepily thought of how technology was no longer the source of wonderment and possibility it had been...

The leading clans (mostly natives of Fukien Province on the mainland opposite Taiwan) were traditional and conservative, and maintained close ties over the decades to the Chiang regime in Nanking and later in Taipei.

I didn’t believe in such things. I believed in facts, science and, every once in a while, human beings.

It was the hottest day in July, and the island’s humidity was draped over me like a mourning veil, yet my body went cold and sweaty. Even my skin was crying.

You think Dad wanted to psuh an orderly cart all these years?" Mom demands. "He did it to put food on our table." Because the state licensure board wouldn't honor his medical degree from China without him going through a residency he couldn't afford with a wife and baby on the way. Because this world crushes all our dreams. I know; God, I know. This time, she doesn't add what she often does: But it's worth it. You got to grow up in America. You'll have opportunities we can't even dream of.” And grown up I have, knowing that it falls to me, as the elder child, to earn back the cost of two lives.

You think Dad wanted to push an orderly cart all these years?" Mom demands. "He did it to put food on our table." Because the state licensure board wouldn't honor his medical degree from China without him going through a residency he couldn't afford with a wife and baby on the way. Because this world crushes all our dreams. I know; God, I know. This time, she doesn't add what she often does: But it's worth it. You got to grow up in America. You'll have opportunities we can't even dream of.” And grown up I have, knowing that it falls to me, as the elder child, to earn back the cost of two lives.

And in Mom's necklace is the echo of their every other sacrifice—her slippers cuffing the hallway as she folds laundry, covering my chores while I studied into the night; the scar where she cut her finger chopping black chickens to nourish me during finals; Dad chauffeuring me to my clinic internship; all their worries over my med school applications. It's one thing to dance around the little controls Mom exerts on my life. Quite another to shed a hard-fought-for future of financial security and respect for our families. My parents would slit their throats for my happiness, and in return, my future is their future. I should have known better than to let myself get swept away.

Sighing, Sophie turns back to me. "So Everett's—" "A boy's name, yeah." My flush deepens, my usual embarrassment quadrupled. I don't want to keep talking over Boy Wonder and annoying him. "My parents didn't realize it was." To which most respond, "How could they not?" Boy Wonder glances at me. "Guess Everetts sounds like Bernadette or Juliette. Easy mistake." I'm surprised. He understood. Sometimes things that show be straightforward—like what's a boy's versus girl's name, or why your entire self-worth isn't at stake when you let down your parents—just aren't. If you didn't grow up like I did.

you think Dad wanted to push an orderly cart all these years?" Mom demands. "he did it to put food on our table." Because the state licensure board wouldn't honor his medical degree from China without him going through a residency he couldn't afford with a wife and baby on the way. Because this world crushes all our dreams. I know; God, I know. This time, she doesn't add what she often does: But it's worth it. You got to grow up in America. You'll have opportunities we can't even dream of.

But these are rules meant to be broken. Something happens to a kid when they see their parent treated like that. Something happens to the parent.

Maybe part of fighting unhappiness in this world is to seize happiness when we can.

...I feel all the parts of myself coming together: glad that a part of me is Chinese, a part of me American, and all of me is simply me.

And I understand now that rejecting their wishes is not the same as rejecting them.

Stiff with terror, I hold the pose as Yannie’s flashes radiate off the backdrop. I open my arms to present in second position. I throw back my head, letting my hair cascade to the small of my back. I curve sideways like the marble statue of a water nymph—Dress like a Nun—that rule has most definitely gone down. At last, the rapid-fire clicking stops. Yannie speaks in Mandarin. Sophie’s no longer smiling. “We’re done.” “Already?” “I told you. She’s got another customer in a few minutes.” I don’t budge.

Also, he’s Taiwanese American,” Spencer says. “Like me and Xavier.” “Which is covered by Chinese American,” Marc says. “I disagree.” “I’m Asian American,” Sophie says. “I’m part Korean. Ever?” “I don’t know,” I admit. “I haven’t really thought about it.” I’m American. I’d never wanted much to do with my Asianness . . . but that was before.

Oh, great idea! I’ll call her and ask—I’m sure she’ll say okay. She’s the one who told me about his family.” She starts for the dressing room, then turns back. “Oh, and Ever? Please don’t take this the wrong way. But we only get three outfits so maybe go more . . . sexy? Not like that little-girl dress last night—and definitely not that preschooler jumpsuit. I mean—have fun, okay?

Sophie kicks her heels over the couch arm, translating. “Tuck your chin in—perfect! Now toss your hair—makes you freer. Yes—gorgeous! Not bad for my baby roommate!” I grit my teeth—Sophie can be so patronizing.

This is art, not porn. And as girly as it is, I want to see my body as I’ve never seen it before. As beautiful and free and daring as my roommate—no, even more daring than Sophie, who, after calling me a little girl all morning isn’t saying a word now.

Calm down.” Sophie twists her hair into a knot and secures it with a clip. She frowns, impatient. “Not like anyone’s going to see your photos. Unless you were planning to hand them out.” “If my parents find out, they’ll disown me.” “Well, they won’t find out. You’re so paranoid about them. Honestly, Ever. All this insecurity is getting annoying.

Messages to call home pile up on my desk, but now that Pearl’s WeChat account has been commandeered, I only email her—she’s lonely, her friends are away for the summer, she’s trying to make progress on her Mozart Sonata in C, forcing herself to read all those notes through her dyslexia.

The moon is sinking in the west, the moon is sinking. With all my heart of you I'm thinking - and you not knowing! A tender bush; who cares to tend it? From my fallen leaves the pains of love are growing. . .

One may ask what makes Pai Hsien-yung's fiction still so compelling in the new millennium. I suggest that it is because instead of being a conservative, Pai impresses as a radical, one who relentlessly campaigns for the power of qing - feeling, sentience, love, affect - via a vis human adversities from national vicissitudes or erotic frustrations, and from fanaticism to the doom of life and death. "Qing is of source unknown, yet it grows ever deeper. The living may die of it, by its power the dead live again," wrote Tang Xianzu (1550-1616), the perennial spokesperson of the "cult of qing.

As they gazed at the moon and the bright stars in the sky, Wang Kuei-sheng said that if he could use his family's gold bars to build a ladder to the heavens he would climb up and pluck the crescent moon to pin in Snow Beauty's hair. Yin Hsueh-yen just smiled, without a word to him, as she extended her dainty orchid-like hand and slowly conveyed the crescent-shape canapés of black caviar into her mouth.

Don't sell these people short," I said to her. "They've all been through a lot. Take Mrs. Chou, for example, the lady who lives in back of you. She's been married four times. Her present husband and the three before him were in the same squadron - they were all good friends to begin with. When one died the next took over, and so on, one by one. Sort of an understanding, you see, so that there would always be someone to take care of her. And Mrs. Hsu across the street from you, her husband used to be her younger brother-in-law. The Hsu brothers were both in the Thirteenth Group. The older brother got killed, and the younger brother took his place. To the children by her first husband he's Uncle, and at the same time he's Papa; for a long time they just didn't know what to call him." "But how can they still talk and laugh like that?" Verdancy looked at me in bewilderment. "My dear girl?" I laughed. "If they don't laugh, what do you expect them to do, cry? If they wanted to cry, they wouldn't have waited till now.

I put my arm around her shoulders and hugged her. "Verdancy, my dear, Shih-niang's got something to tell you; I hope you'll listen. It's not easy to be the wife of Flying Warrior, you know. Twenty-four long hours a day your heart is trailing up there after him. You can gaze at the sky, and look and look, until your eyes run with blood, but your men up there won't even know. They're just like so many iron birds - one moment they fly to the east, the next moment they fly to the west; you just can't catch them. Since you're married into our Village, Verdancy, please don't mind if I speak frankly to you: you've just got to harden your heart in order to endure the storm and stress that is to come.

Verdancy, you mustn't let yourself waste away like this and think you're doing it for Kuo Chen. If Kuo Chen is there and knows about it, he won't be able to rest in peace." Verdancy listened to me; all of a sudden she sat up, shaking she nodded at me and laughed coldly. "What does he know? He fell and his body was dashed to pieces; how can he feel now? So much the better for him: bang and he's no more - I died, too, but I can still feel." As she spoke, her face was distorted, half crying and half laughing, a terrible sight.

He turned to Mrs. Liu. "My dear Sister, don't underestimate this little fellow. He might turn out to be a general one day!" "A general?" Mrs. Liu snorted. "In this world you're doing all right if you don't starve. I couldn't care less whether or not he becomes a high-ranking official." "What do you want to be when you grow up boy?" Lai Ming-sheng asked Liu Ying. "Commander in Chief of the Army!" Nose in the air, Liu Ying answered in all seriousness.

When I walked out into the garden, I was stunned to see those hundred or so azaleas, one mound piled on another mound, one wave churning up another wave, all exploding in riotous bloom as if a chestful of fresh blood suddenly had shot forth from an unstanchable wound and sprayed the whole garden, leaving marks and stains everywhere, blood-red. I had never seen azaleas bloom with such abandon, and so angrily.

The Brocade River carries springtide splendor to Heaven as to Earth; Above Jade Mountain the floating clouds transform the ancient to the present hour.

It is no longer “the biggest city on earth,” if it ever could have been accurately counted as such. Others such as Los Angeles have a far greater land mass, and several years ago the Tokyo-Yokahama corridor replaced Mexico City as the world’s most populous metropolis. Numerous other cities, although with fewer residents, have far greater population density. Mexico City has eighty-four hundred people per square kilometer, while Mumbai, Lagos, Karachi, and Seoul have more than double that figure. Bogotá, Shanghai, Lima, and Taipei also are significantly more jam-packed.

At some point, Paul vaguely realized, technology had begun for him to mostly only indicate the inevitability and vicinity of nothingness. Instead

The scale of what Taiwan had accomplished, in just six post-war decades and under extremely straitened circumstances, was astonishing. In 1952, 42 per cent of Taiwanese were illiterate. Fifty years later, nearly 60 per cent of Taiwanese went to university. (Tellingly, the illustration on Taiwan’s 1000-dollar note was four schoolchildren studying a globe, though it wasn’t apparent whether they were learning their foreign capitals or plotting Chinese missile trajectories.) Taiwan’s 23 million diligent, dogged and courteous people had built the seventeenth-biggest economy in the world, and accrued the third-largest foreign reserves. Their tiny island boasted six domestic airlines, trains you could set your watch by and, in the shape of Taipei 101, the world’s tallest building. And they’d made their transition from military dictatorship to pluralist democracy without getting any blood on the carpet. For a country that didn’t formally exist in the eyes of most of the world, this was decent going. Having visited many broken-down, violent dumps where everybody insisted that The Struggle superseded all other considerations, like picking up the rubbish and teaching kids to read, and invariably blamed someone else for all their problems, I fell hopelessly in love with the place. Were I a George Soros-style billionaire eccentric, I’d establish a program under which the world’s nationalist crazies, idiot warlords and dingbat terrorists would be sent to Taiwan, to see what can be accomplished when people stick the grievance schtick on the back-burner, put in a day’s work and behave in a civilised manner. Taiwan

Thiết nghĩ bệnh tật của người Trung Quốc chúng ta cũng đến là dị, có lúc, lối Tây chưa chắc đã công hiệu, vẫn phải chạy chữa bằng mấy bài thuốc gia truyền, như châm cứu chẳng hạn, chọc tùm lum vào, có khi lại chọc trúng chỗ...

Bọn con trai bây giờ đều muốn ra nước ngoài học các ngành khoa học kỹ thuật.” "Đây cũng là xu thế tất yếu." Ngô Trụ Quốc đáp. "Trước kia chúng ta chẳng ra sức khởi xướng 'khoa học’ ư? Giờ thì 'khoa học' thiếu điều cướp mất bát cơm của chúng ta rồi.

Làm vợ của lính không quân không dễ đâu. Một ngày hai mươi tư tiếng, quả tim đều treo trên trời. Dù cho con dõi lên trời nhìn đến chảy máu mắt thì người trên đó cũng chưa chắc đã biết. Họ cũng như những con chim sắt ấy, thoắt bay đằng đông, thoắt lượn đông tây, con chẳng tài nào tóm được.

Lần trước Tần Hùng ra khơi, chị nhất thời nổi hứng, đến Cơ Long tiễn gã lên tàu, trên bến lúc nhúc những người đàn bà của cánh thuyên viên, tàu đi rồi, ai nấy rưng rưng nước mắt, nhìn ra mặt biển mà như mất hồn. Chị không khỏi thầm kinh hãi. Lần này hạ cố lấy Trần Phát Vinh, ngay đến một bức thư chị cũng không gửi cho Tần Hùng. Tần Hùng không thể trách chị tuyệt tình, chị còn có thể đợi đến mất hồn như đám phụ nữ kia được sao? Đàn bà bốn mươi tuổi không đợi nổi. Đàn bà bốn mươi tuổi chẳng hơi sức đâu mà yêu đương. Đàn bà bốn mươi tuổi - ngay người đàn ông đích thực cũng có thể không màng. Vậy, đàn bà bốn mươi tuổi rốt cuộc muốn gì chứ? Sếp Kim gí tắt đuôi điếu thuốc trong gạt tàn, ngẫm nghĩ hồi lâu, bỗng dưng chị ngẩng đầu lên, nhìn vào gương nở nụ cười nham hiểm. Chị cần một tiệm tơ lụa như Nhậm Đại Đại, đương nhiên phải to gấp đôi tiệm của ả ta, mở ngay đối diện Phú Xuân Lâu của ả, hằng giảm giá hẳn hai mươi phần trăm, để con ả gian xảo chua ngoa đó nếm mùi lợi hại, biết Ngọc Quán Âm Kim Triệu Lệ đây không phải dễ chọc vào.

Vinh quang quá khứ của chúng ta, dù sao cũng dễ kể ra hơn, tôi có thể không thẹn mà nói với các sinh viên nước ngoài của mình rằng: 'Triều đại Lý Đường đã dựng nên một đế quốc lớn hùng mạnh nhất, với nền văn hóa rực rỡ nhất thế giới đương thời. Là thế đấy, tôi ở hải ngoại hô hào mấy chục năm, có lúc cũng không khỏi tức cười, cảm thấy mình giống hệt cung nữ tóc trắng của Đường Huyền Tông, cứ ra sức khoác lác với người nước ngoài về sự tích từ thời Thiên Bảo..." “Nhưng mà Trụ Quốc, cậu đã viết ngần ấy tác phẩm!" Giáo sư Dư cắt ngang lời Ngô Trụ Quốc, tựa hồ phản đối. "Tôi đã viết mấy cuốn: Quyền hạn tể tướng thời Đường, Chế độ phiên trấn Đường Tống, tôi còn viết một tập sách mỏng nhan để Con em vườn lê của Đường Minh Hoàng, tổng cộng mấy trăm nghìn chữ – đều là những lời sáo rỗng...” Ngô Trụ Quốc xua tay kêu lên, rồi lại cười khẩy, “Những sách đó xếp trong thư viện, chắc chỉ có sinh viên Mỹ học tiến sĩ mới giở xem thôi.” “Trụ Quốc, trà của cậu nguội rồi, để tôi đi đổi cho cậu cốc khác.” Giáo sư Dư đứng dậy, Ngô Trụ Quốc liên chộp lấy tay ông, ngẩng đầu nhìn ông nói: “Khâm Lỗi, tôi nói thật với anh: tôi viết ra số sách đó, hoàn toàn là để ứng phó với đại học Mỹ, không có tác phẩm xuất bản, họ sẽ buộc thôi việc, không cho nâng bậc, nên cứ cách hai năm, tôi lại nặn ra một công trình, nếu không buộc phải xuất bản tác phẩm, tôi không đời nào viết nổi một cuốn.

Các chú em, lũ chúng mày chưa nếm trải cảm giác bị người ta chôn sống, giống như là cổ họng mày bị bóp nghẹt, hét không ra tiếng ấy, nhưng mà mắt mày vẫn trông thấy khuôn mặt bọn chúng, tai vẫn nghe thấy tiếng bọn chúng. Mày trông thấy bọn chúng cầm máy quay chĩa vào mày dưới đèn rọi hồ quang, còn mày thì sao? Mạch của mày đập mỗi lúc một chậm, từng dây thần kinh tê liệt, trơ mắt thấy chân tay mình rụng rời từng khúc!

Sophie, long-limbed in a white Italian bikini, walks to the back of the studio, dialing her aunt. She makes a skeptical noise. “Wait until my next shots—then you’ll see a real rebel, baby girl.” I lower my leg, fighting annoyance. I am rebellious.

Seven thousand miles away, their invisible hands are still tight around my life.

I’m most surprised by the competitive streak she’s revealed. Xavier means more to her than she’s let on. “But what about Mindy? Doesn’t it bother you—?” Sophie rolls her head along with her eyes. “Look, all guys play the field—at least the non-nerds. She’s the girl who slept with him once. I’m the girl he found afterward. And all those codes about dating—honestly, the only one that makes sense is ‘All’s fair in love and war.’ Even if they were betrothed from the cradle, it’s not over until they tie the knot.

when i was five i went fishing with my family when i was five i went fishing with my family my dad caught a turtle my mom caught a snapper my brother caught a crab i caught a whale that night we ate crab the next night we ate turtle the next night we ate snapper the night ate we ate whale the night ate we ate whale the night ate we ate whale the night ate we ate whale the night ate we ate whale the night ate we ate whale

Laura was ten feet away, in a throne-like chair, facing Paul, but not looking at him, or anyone, it seemed. Paul openly stared at her for around ten seconds, to no response, then moved chips and guacamole onto his lap (partly because he felt anxious about Laura seeming to refuse to look at him) and focused on steadily eating while repeatedly thinking “eating chips and guacamole.

Gradually, after being the target a few times of a similar capriciousness, which he discerned as default behavior for most people, and not liking it, Paul learned to not be more generous or enthusiastic or attentive than he could sustain regardless of his mood and to not talk to people if his only reason to was because he felt lonely or bored

On Saturday morning, he'd chosen his favorite place in Taipei to show me, Chung-shan Park. We wandered on a beautiful walking path around a lake with spraying fountains, surrounded by trees, and under the shadow of Taipei's iconic skyscraper, which was called Taipei 101. It was a great place for people-watching, with young couples on romantic walks, parents pushing babies in strollers, older people practicing tai chi, kids riding bikes, and nature lovers snapping photos of flowers. Best of all were the baobing- delicious shaved ices with a super-thin texture and condensed milk that added an extra sweet flavor. I topped my baobing with mango chunks, while Uncle Masa chose sweet potato chunks on his, an addition I never imagined could be delicious until I sampled his for myself.

You're up early," he says. Asshole--it's just past one. "Too early." I give him the finger, low, earning a startled exclamation from his partner. Then I duck around them and head into the gym, Rick's chuckles ghosting behind.

I glare around the lobby, and suddenly no one will meet my eyes. "If you guys want a live viewing someday from a girl you actually care about, then maybe instead of doing a hundred push-ups a day and ogling a photo that doesn't belong to you, you should man up and be the guy who deserves one. So anyone with my photo, hand it over now.

Once it drew me into its gravity, this strange and alien land I’ve chosen to call home for long stretches has been the one true constant in my life. Taiwan has granted me a near-constant reprieve from my most feared nemesis, boredom, but at times she’s driven me half-mad. Taiwan has been my muse, the source of inspiration for much of my creative output as a writer, while at the same time never quite letting me forget that the language in which I write is not the lingua franca of the place about which I write. I have loved Taiwan for nearly all of my adult life. At times this love has shone as brilliantly as the moon over Kenting during the Mid-Autumn Festival, at others far less brightly, like a crescent moon during the long rainy season in Taipei,…. So when I sang it was this love for Taiwan, waxing and waning, but always present, that I felt.

He allowed himself to consider earlier opportunities, mostly for something to do, and discerned after a brief sensation of helplessness--like if he'd divided 900 by itself and wanted the calculator to answer 494/494 or 63/63--that, in terms of leaving this social situation, he shouldn't have been born.

A person catches a cold because something is wrong inwardly. Then when a cold wind comes, he catches a cold. If a person does not have a problem inwardly, he will not catch a cold from a cold wind. When the “wind” from England blew to Taipei, however, some people caught a “cold.” At that time the wind in Taipei was the wind of forsaking the ground. This wind was blowing continuously and secretly. Not long after, it blew to Hong Kong. Because Hong Kong already had a problem, as soon as the wind came, the co-workers in Hong Kong went to Tiu Keng Leng to discuss whether or not to keep the ground.

There is a Chinese superstition that those who commit suicide wearing red clothes will become powerful, vengeful ghosts. They will come back and seek retribution for the injury done to them when they were still alive.

The unindividualized, shifting mass of everyone else would be a screen, distributed throughout the city, onto which he'd project the movie of his uninterrupted imagination. Because he'd appear to, and be able to pretend he was\, but never actually be a part of the mass, maybe he'd begin to feel a kind of needless intimacy, not unlike being in the same room as a significant other and feeling affection without touching or speaking. An earnest assembling of the backup life he'd sketched and constructed the blueprints and substructures (during the average of six weeks per year, spread throughout his life, that he'd been in Taiwan) would begin, at some point, after which, months and years later, one morning, he would sense the independent organization of a second, itinerant consciousness—lured here by the new, unoccupied structures—toward which he'd begin sending the data of his sensory perception.

Nice" said Paul staring transfixed at Fran's delicate and extreme gaze, like that of a skeleton with eyeballs, or a person with their face peeled off.

Susie-Q," said Daniel with a smirk-like grin indicating both earnest disapproval and a kind of fondness toward Seroquel and its intense, often uncomfortable tranquilizing effects—as if, believing Susie-Q wasn't malicious, he could forgive her every time she induced twelve hours of sleep followed by twelve to twenty-four hours of feeling lost and irritable, therefore she functioned, if inadvertently, as a teacher of forgiveness and acceptance and empathy, for which he was grateful.