Hey friend,
I’m writing a small series of ten articles that tells the story of my life in the last ten years since I first studied in the States. My moonshot goal is to write a mini-memoir in the long term. Here comes the first one of the series!
The Tipping Point of My Life
It was late evening in the old Japanese-style library my junior year of college in Taiwan. Palm leaves were gently waving in the summer breeze. I sat against the dark wood desk along with a couple of other students when I opened my laptop under the green table lamp.
I was procrastinating writing my final term essay for my 20th-century American Novel Class when I received the email that I’d been anxiously waiting upon for weeks.
“Congratulations, Yu-Hsiu!
You are selected for the 2011-2012 Humanities and Social Science Fellowship from the Department of Education.
The school you are assigned to is Arizona State University.”
I couldn’t believe what I saw on my computer screen.
That Saturday, I took a train back to my hometown Taichung. My mom was waiting for me on her moped outside the rundown train station with walls of broken red bricks. I hugged her and wept,
“Mom, I finally made it.”
“Congratulations.” She said.
She handed me my helmet with Hello Kitty stickers on it. I wiped off my snot and buckled my helmet.
I never imagined someone with my family background could one day win a full scholarship studying abroad. For me, it’s for people who had highly educated parents that deserve this type of opportunity. In this short exchange, I felt like I had proven people wrong about what people like me are capable of and that I had made my whole extended family proud.
But little did we know this brief hug would be one of the last moments before our mother-daughter relationship changed forever. She would fight for the next 10 years in a war she never chose to fight, with a girl who was about to get a taste of independence in America and rebel against the world she grew up in.
Get Good Grades and Stay in Taiwan
In Taiwan, we have a catchy saying “來來來,來台大.去去去,去美國”. (Come, come, come, come to NTU (National Taiwan University). Go, go, go, go to America). This saying tells the dream of elite Taiwanese families. For them, success means that their kids study at the best university in Taiwan, NTU, and then get a graduate degree or job in the United States.
But growing up, that was never my dream.
I was mostly focused on doing well on tests and my parents supported me with this mission.. They spent money on something we call “cram school,” which is basically extra school after school. They hired a tutor on weekends to make sure I did well on those tests in both cram school and regular school. But their goal was only for me to make it into a mid-tier college in Taiwan (Yes, they never thought a kid of a family like ours could make it to the top ties schools.) As for study abroad, it was just never in our conversations.
If there’s anything close to us being associated with life outside Taiwan, it would be a very faint memory of me listening to a story of my mom’s childhood when she was a kid. According to her, someone in our extended family made it to the U.K., and that family member never shared the chocolate she brought back to Taiwan with my mom.
But I remember the first few times I became aware of this path. It was when I was studying in high school, and my parents’ friends, whose kids were older, started to leave Taiwan one after another. One moment stood out when I saw my dad chatting with an uncle whose kid studied in the States. My dad responded,
“It costs millions of Taiwanese dollars to study in the States? Whoa, that’s scary. I would go broke if that’s my kid.”
I remember seeing the shock on his face too. It left a strong impression on me, and I took him literally.
Other memories associated with leaving Taiwan were the rumors of “ bad consequences” of studying abroad. I remember my mom telling me one day about the son of an “Auntie” in the market who studied in the States for his grad school. She said, “he got into a fight with his dad and never came back to Taiwan for the past ten years. He only came back to visit his family at his dad’s funeral.” The subtle warning was clear: don’t end up like him.
These conversations scared me. I thought to myself, “I would never do that to my parents.” In Chinese culture, being a good, responsible kid with filial piety means paying back your parents financially after graduating from school, not putting more financial burden on them, or abandoning them to start a new life on the other side of the world.
The Unexpected Scholarship
Even though studying in the States was never my plan, the first part of that catchy saying, studying at NTU, was my dream, a common dream of most Taiwanese students who define their self-worth first and foremost through academic accomplishments.
I didn’t make it into NTU until my second attempt. It took me dropping out of school and taking a year off of school to take the exam, and I’ll tell you that whole story another time.
When I enrolled at NTU, I was a student in the Foreign Languages and Literature department. Many of my peers were children of diplomats who lived in several countries throughout their life. We also had rich Taiwanese kids who grew up in Africa and South America and returned to Taiwan to get a taste of studying in their motherland. Our department was known as a home of famous authors and leaders of social movements. My professors were the first ones that introduce Western philosophies into Taiwan after World War II. Many of our female professors are known for starting the first wave of feminism in Taiwan, and I was so proud to be their student.
Before my college years, I was a believer in traditional Taiwanese culture. My life purpose was to be a nice, docile, skinny girl who never disobeyed her parents, married a husband that treated her well, and stayed in my hometown with my parents for the rest of my life, one that is praised in the Confucian culture.
But my college years changed me. Through reading about Western philosophy and novels, I started to take a glimpse into what life could be like growing up with freedom and autonomy. When I hung out with my friends, they talked about what it was like growing up outside Taiwan. During summer breaks, lots of my classmates went to summer schools in UK or U.S. or went traveling extensively abroad. When we talked about the future, staying in Taiwan was not a cool option. Because of these influences, I started to wonder … what if I could also study abroad? What if I could also immerse myself in those castle-like libraries, stroll down the streets I’ve only seen in Hollywood movies? What if I can explore ideas without the conformism of Taiwan, with friends of different ethnicity from around the world? What if I can really express myself as an empowered female with the freedom to pursue who I want to be instead of being judged by always standing out in the patriarchal society of Taiwan?
I brought up this idea to my college mentor, Mr. Li. when I finished my sophomore year. Later that year, he forwarded me an e-mail announcing the governmental fellowship. I applied for the fellowship because I didn’t want to disappoint him, but never really thought I would make it to the final round. He cared about me so much that I felt like I had to make at least the gesture of applying. Otherwise, I will be so ashamed of being a 扶不上牆的爛泥- someone that is so shitty that is pointless for anyone to offer help, just like a pool of mud that will never make a wall.
To my surprise, after months of interviews, presentations, and competitions, I got selected as one of the ten students to study abroad for a year on a full scholarship. While I teared up reading the email, I knew nothing of Arizona State University. I put the school name as a keyword into Google search, and voila, descriptions like “ASU-Top 1 Party School in America.” and images of nearly-naked college students dancing in the pool popped up on my screen.
“Hell yeah! This gal is gonna get liberated!”
Six months later, on a summer day in August 2011, my parents took the bus with me to Taoyuan Airport with my two big suitcases. This was the first time I was about to leave home for a year, the longest I’d been separated from my family. My mom was crying so hard on the ride. So was I. Her cry left such an unbearable sadness in my heart and became all I could think about. I couldn’t even remember if my dad or my sister was there sending me off or not.
After thirteen hours, I arrived at LAX airport. And my life was never the same.
What’s Up?
“What’s up?”
Diego, the new friend I met in the student dining hall, gave me a charming big smile while skateboarding past me.
I smiled at him embarrassedly.
“WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT?” I thought to myself.
I started learning English when I was 5th grade. By the time I was a visiting student at Arizona State University in 2011, I’d learned English for almost 11 years. I read esoteric English texts on structuralism, post-structuralism, and psychoanalysis during the past three years of undergrad. But still, of all the English greetings I was familiar with-“How are you?” “How’s it going?” “How are you doing?” Not a single teacher or textbook ever taught me about the simple greeting: “What’s up.” What’s up with that!?
I stood there in a cloud of confusion. In that split-second, I could see myself as this short Asian girl standing still next to a thirty-foot-tall cactus, sweating and smiling, in the blazing Arizona heat.
What had I gotten myself into?
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SPecial thanks to Sandra Yvonne, Camilo Moreno-Salamanca, Rebecca Isjwara, Amer Ameen, and Pauli for feedback on this issue!
What’s up? The sky.. ahahahahaha
What a cool idea, Angie! Love this glimpse into your past and how the experience of going to the US changed your future. I resonate with my first overseas move opening up my world in ways I couldn’t have imagined had I never left Montreal. Look forward to reading more of your mini-memoir!