im sitting by the pond in chaing kai shek memorial hall watching the birds float and lay and prance about. the koi are gathering near the shore next to a pair of mothers and their kids, teaching the meaning of abundance to the koi. im half-thinking in chinese, half in english. its funny how quickly your mind adapts to a new environment when immersed in another world.
Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall is one of the top tourist attractions of Taipei. The loaded history behind the man isn’t made clear in the top 10 guides, week itineraries, and influencer vlogs, but thousands still flock to the towering hall dedicated to the “Father of Taiwan.” Last time I came here (almost 6 years ago) following one of these said guides, I don’t remember the beautiful pond and flourishing trails around the compound. We made it up to the top of the hall and had to get on our way to the next item on the agenda. There was no time to linger, to wander, to sit with the life blooming around. Overhead, tiny birds the size of my thumb are playing in a frenzy, looping around and through the large pine’s branches. On my side, I see a heron whip his head around with a scaly prize dangling from his beak. All around, life is teeming. Life is knocking at the door. Life is storming down the gate and dragging my tired body from my bed into being with the world.
I walk up the hundreds (literally) of steps up to Chiang Kai Shek’s Memorial Hall. The cream marble looks flat in the overcast spring sky. I haven’t seen the sun for over 24 hours. I wonder if she remembers my name. Walking in the hall, I find a sight simpler than one might expect from effort required to visit. A large recreation of Chiang Kai Shek in bronze sitting in a chair looms overhead. Two army guards stand at attention on the sides, and looking up, a hexagonal dome splays out, levels collapsing into the white sun against a bright blue backdrop of the KMT flag. Two sentences in cursive script weave down either side of the hall. One says “The meaning of life lies in the creation of life in the universe.” And the other: “The purpose of life is to enhance the life of all human beings.” I walk outside, down the hundreds of dull cream steps, across the long plaza, towards the blue gates looming in the distance. As I cross the path that brings you to the gardens, I see a flock of birds race across towards the pond I had come from.
Growing up, I always had a really complicated relationship with traveling with my family. We would go on these extravagantly planned trips to amazing, exotic places, but they would be packed full of activities that I didn’t care for at my young age. My mom loves to recall how I always pretended I had a stomachache when we were visiting temple after temple in China. At some point, my pretending manifested into my tendency to be inflicted by stomach problems. I started thinking about my younger self visiting this historical site, and how much he would’ve loved to amble through the gardens, chase birds, listen to the wind and trees play.
Despite being in a place of endless abundance—the availability of cheap and delicious food, the inviting public infrastructure, the warmth of the people—I find myself grasping for the best, reaching for perfection. I’m looking at google maps reviews at the local food stands. I’m debating which items to get in advance. I’m eliminating the leisure from my leisurely, unplanned, unrushed way of traveling.
Traveling seems to expose the underbelly of personality, and I’m discovering a forgotten fear of being illegitimate. I want to blend in. I want to appear like a local, so I go through all these machinations that don’t actually help me pass off. Why am i so insistent? What am i so afraid of? how could i embrace imperfection, to cast off my armor of working harder, studying longer, pretending better?
Now it is Saturday. The days are blurring together—what I did and what I ate and who I saw—all so wonderful and unforgettable in the moment, yielding exclaims of woohoo and mMmmM and ahhoahh, now part of one big blob comprising the rest of my life. This morning I got a haircut, wash, and massage. The man who was washing my hair swapped out for someone else in the middle of it, and I didn’t even notice. I roamed the streets for food and fruits and snacks bursting with sweetness and decades of dedication from worn hands and wrinkled faces.
I don’t want to leave the house, even as a voice urges me to make full use of my time here. I want to live here. I came here to have a break from my work, but it’s not so easy to escape. Sometimes I think I’m bound to my work, that I’m imprisoned to the fealty emblazoned into me by working. When I’m baristaing, I don’t have a dead moment. When my shift ends, it feels like I’ve finally stopped holding my breath. When I’m traveling, I think I make work out of my travels. Even as I travel leisurely, relaxing at parks between destinations, wandering into restaurants that beckon to me with their smell and line, ensuring a full eight hours of sleep each night.
I can’t believe how completely the way things are from the past can completely disappear, and I can’t believe how so much can happen and people can hold onto themselves and what they believe in. I’m amazed by people, so I spend most of my time paying attention to them. I notice the couple who rode past me on the motorcycle cozying up to each other at the bar I’m sitting in now. I remember how the clerk at this thrift store I visited once in Taipei carefully but firmly insists on newcomers to be measured before they look for any pants. I think my increased noticing is reflecting on a heightened awareness of my own automatic actions, and how they might reflect strangely to an outside observer.
I have a compulsion with opening the notification drawer by clicking the top right of my computer screen. I obsessively open my screen to check the time when I’ve got nothing to get to. I have a bad habit of leaving my water bottle cap loose and picking it up by the cap. I hate when people leave some messages unread, but find it so hard to be diligent about offering the same diligence in return.