As we walked through Taoyuan airport, it seemed as if nothing had changed in the nine years since the last time I lived on the island. In 2009, I spent the summer there studying Mandarin at Taipei Language Institute (TLI). At that time, I lived alone in a small faculty apartment near National Taiwan University. I was here now with Kristen, and as we walked she saw news bulletins in English about the approaching typhoon, and she was excited to know we arrived with such a grand natural fanfare. I was surprised that she was not afraid. In fact, I had hoped we would miss it, which we mostly did. As we rode toward our hotel, it was late in the evening, and the rain began to ease. That night the storm turned and headed north toward Japan, granting a pass to Taiwan. The following day was the first day of October, and the weather was that perfect Taiwanese autumn, a warm but gentle sun with a soft breeze. I was home again, and Kristen was there for the first time. It was our honeymoon, an announcement my godfather Dr. Chinghsi Perng declared in our email exchange. Our Taiwan honeymoon is a year behind us, or if you are thinking as Chinese language indicates, our honeymoon is one year above now. The past is above, and the future is below, a verticality of time in Chinese language. As we landed in Taiwan, we could not know the gifts we would receive, even as each day was a gift. We made a decision to create a treasure chest of memories that we could draw on in the future, and the future is now. So I hope all of you, in your own lives, can use the beautiful moments of the past, among other strategies, to help sustain you in this present that engages us all in this global pandemic. Although some blame the pandemic on globalism, our connectedness as human beings is a fact of life now, most of which I think is good. Prelude to Our Taiwanese Wedding In the evening that we landed and took our room in the Sherwood Hotel in the Songshan District of Taipei, we took a taxi to the GongGuan area of the city, its Harvard Square, the campus neighborhood of National Taiwan University (NTU) , where I first landed in Taiwan in January, 2002. We walked along the edge of the main gate, me feeling the rush of memories, the feeling of being home, and Kristen marveling at all she was seeing for the first time. We stood on Roosevelt Road and watched the stream of motorcycles before taking a taxi back to our hotel with a driver who sang Italian opera for us. It’s a place with one of the highest levels of education in the world, a gateway to the rest of East Asia. A few days later we had our Taiwanese wedding, something of a surprise my godfather and godmother, the Perngs, put together for us. Dr. Perng is professor emeritus at NTU, and he gave me my Chinese name when I was teaching in the theater department as a Fulbright. He was chair of the department, and he gave me the name Wei Yafeng 尉雅風。At the banquet table with friends from my first time in the country surrounding us, Kristen was given her Chinese name Shi Keting 史可亭。That first weekend in the city, we were guests of Dr. and Mrs. Perng and friends in the National Theater, who took us to see the premiere of the play Hold On, Love!, by Dr. Perng and Fang Chen, with the English translation by my godfather, a Shakespearean scholar whose translations are well known. The play was inspired by As You Like It, and written in Hakka, one of China’s ethnic cultures. We were in the spell of enchantment that comes when couples such as ourselves meet later in life, and can share across time and cultures the special parts of our lives. Kristen is Jewish, daughter of a matrilineal line tracing back to southern Russian immigrants who landed in New York in the early twentieth century. Our home has the rich air of worlds inside worlds. Tea, Poetry, and Our Honeymoon Night at Hen Nan Temple and Monastery Two residents of the neighborhood park behind the Sherwood. These parks are found all over Taipei. In some of them Tai Chi enthusiasts practice early in the morning when weather permits. We met with old friends and had lunches and dinners. Ze Yang, a poet and editor, took us for tea at the Wisteria Tea House. The playwright and actress, Hsing Penning, hosted us for tea and snacks at her home and on another evening had dinner with us. Scott Prairie, the musician and songwriter, met us for dinner and walked with us through GongGuan. Taking the train to the eastern coast city of Taiwan, Hualien, we spent the night at Hen Nan Temple and Monastery, where I spent a little over a month during my longest period in Taiwan, the greater part of my yearlong sabbatical in 2004 to 2005. While in the monastery, I often sat and watched the southern stream of the Pacific looking toward the Philippines, wondering if I should retire to the monastery. It was enticing, but I decided to come back to the day swirl of Taipei before returning to the States. It was in the monastery that I was persuaded to begin writing poetry again, after a hiatus of several years. Back in Taipei on the Monday before we flew back to Los Angeles, Kristen went to the national museum with Joyce Tsai, another friend of many years. On that evening, Mr. Lu Di presented me with the 69th national medal from Taiwan’s Writers and Artists Association, in recognition of my achievements in poetry and the honor and distinction it brings to Taiwan. Afterwards LuDi and his wife Jen took us out to a generous lunch. Past and Present Merge in Memory I am at work on a memoir that focuses on how Chinese culture, specifically Daoism and the soft or internal arts of Taiji, Xingyi, and Bagua, have helped me achieve wholeness, making it possible for me to become the poet I intuitively sensed in myself when I was a teenager, to endure that journey and realize the joy of it as well as the hardship, to make my own sense of my own life. In my poetry this journey is solidified in my later works, especially The Plum Flower Trilogy (The Plum Flower Dance, The Government of Nature, and City of Eternal Spring) and my most recent book, Spirit Boxing.
Living in Taiwan and China over the period from 2002 to 2009, afforded me the space of self-reflection that was key to that stage of the integration of my life experience that began in my late forties, and our honeymoon in Taiwan was my way of sharing that key with Kristen. As newlyweds in our 60’s, we were able to see how the whole world of human beings has a half most westerners never get to see. We were able to experience the blessing of the gift of insight. In some future, maybe the work of extending ourselves to worlds we do not know will help us understand we really do need each other, as our Earth groans under the weight of 7.5 billion human beings. It is said that Atlas shrugged. But, our grandchildren may well have to write the 21st century myth of how Earth shrugged, forcing us to reach through languages and beyond xenophobia to realize the human reality, which is that we are all connected. That is our natural condition, and we fight so hard to deny it. See more of what I'm up to, now: My video presentation for the new anthology African American Poetry/ 250 Years of Struggle and Song just published by the Library of America Copyright © 2021, Afaa M. Weaver All references, including hyperlinks and videos, are for educational purposes only. |
