找自己 -- My Grafting Stage 我的接枝期
The sound of cicadas and lawn mowers signals that it’s officially summer time. I thought about last year when I visited my family in Taiwan during my summer vacation and that last day when I had to take three flights back to the United States.
While the plane was traveling across the Pacific Ocean, I looked outside of the small airplane window. The clouds below me looked like an ocean made of cotton candy. Just that same morning, my phone numbers started with 0933. The app that I used the most often was called "Line." The language that I heard and spoke was 中文, Mandarin, a bit of Taiwanese, and almost zero English. The people that I interacted with are the ones that I've known for more than a decade at least. The temperature was above 35'c, or 95'F, and the humidity was, well, sweaty and sticky.
"Ding." The seat-belt sign was on and the flight attendant announced that the plane was about to land. That was my signal to prepare for a different life as I reached the other side of the Pacific Ocean. I took out my phone and put a different sim card in it. It's still the same phone, but now to contact me, the numbers to dial starting with 765. I noticed the announcement from the pilot was in English, and there was no one else around for me to speak in Mandarin anymore. I told myself to get mentally prepared to interact with people that did not know me before I was 27 years old and call me Yi-Fan instead of 逸凡.
The airplane landed. I looked at my phone, and now I was 12 hours slower than the time zone that I was in this morning. It felt like I was at the completely opposite end of the world.
Me, the Only Correlation Between My Two Worlds
The first few times when I had to switch 180 degrees like this, I felt excited and adventurous. My adrenaline was pumping hard. I also did not care too much about people who didn't quite understand me in English. "One day they will." I was thinking to myself positively.
What I did not expect was, after more than 7 years, this switching process did not get easier as I got more practice. I know, just the idea of three flights and 30 hours of traveling back home is exhausting. It wasn't my first time doing this, though. And yet this time my heart felt heavier than before. I had accepted the fact that I will never in America completely understand or share the same feelings towards some cultural references, whichever lines from a movie or a song people refer to. And I am okay with that now. But what is harder for me to accept is, it's getting harder for me to switch back to 逸凡 completely. Little by little, I feel like I’m starting to lose my old self.
These past two summers when I went back to Taiwan, multiple clerks from various stores commented on my "accent" in Mandarin and doubted if I was a local. The first time that happened, I felt amused. But by the third time, I felt scared. Am I an outsider now even in my homeland? I also lost touch with the latest slang in Mandarin that people were using and had to ask my friends to explain them to me like I was a foreigner. I went to karaoke with friends and found so many new bands whose songs I was not able to sing along with.
I just feel really confused.
My two worlds are so clear cut from each other. Two sim cards, two languages, two social lives where the people that I interact with only interact with me and do not really know the circle of my people from the other side. Two different ways to think, and two different ways to live lives. Two names and two identities.
I am the only correlation amongst these two worlds. The only thing that is not clear cut is me. I was trying to make them clear cut from each other but I failed. The truth is, I am getting worse at it. I felt like I am standing alone in the limbo, not fully feeling belonging to either side. And it feels lonely.
Grafting
鳳梨釋迦（Fènglí shìjiā, atemoya） is a type of fruit I used to eat back in Taiwan. I always find the name of it in Mandarin interesting. The first two characters "鳳梨 (fènglí)" means "pineapple,", and the last two characters "釋迦 (shìjiā)" means "sugar apple." I've never seen a sugar apple in any groceries here in Indiana. It is one of my favorite fruits and it tastes sweet and mushy with lots of pits in it. But don't offer it to Buddha at your family shrine because the Buddha might view it as an insult since it looks like the buddha's head.
This whole process is called "graft." I learned about this term in English from this book called "Translating Myself and Others." However, the author, Jhumpa Lahiri, did not use this word to refer to a biological procedure, but to her own experiences growing up and living in different cultures.
And it dawned on me. I am actually going through this similar "grafting" process as well.
"Yi-Fan" in Indiana is a new branch which is grafting on my Taiwanese core "逸凡." And to prepare for this grafting process, some old branches need to be trimmed out first. But it is scary to cut off the old branches. The tree starts to look different from its old time. And what if nothing else grows out of the trimmed spots and the tree gets wounded?
It is scary to realize that I think differently now from my past self. Was I wrong before or am I wrong at the current moment?
It is terrifying to notice that I might from now on always think or act a bit differently from people around me no matter where I am. Am I the weird one or are they?
I am worried if I am too different from my family and old friends now. What if I lose them?
I am tired of feeling like I don't fully belong to a place and live only half of my life all the time.
There is no guarantee that after the grafting process the fruit will taste better. But I want to believe that it might be. And it is the only way to connect my two worlds and maybe the correlation in between will get bigger. Some new buds might sprout out from this correlation. They grow and blossom into flowers that people from either side of the world haven't really seen. The flowers stand there, not asking for any labels or approval, but wishing to be appreciated and witnessed for their uniqueness and beauty.
I feel a sense of total freedom and that I belong everywhere.
May this grafting destiny always allow me to see the world with a fresh pair of eyes.
While the plane was traveling across the Pacific Ocean, I looked outside of the small airplane window. The clouds below me looked like an ocean made of cotton candy. Just that same morning, my phone numbers started with 0933. The app that I used the most often was called "Line." The language that I heard and spoke was 中文, Mandarin, a bit of Taiwanese, and almost zero English. The people that I interacted with are the ones that I've known for more than a decade at least. The temperature was above 35'c, or 95'F, and the humidity was, well, sweaty and sticky.
"Ding." The seat-belt sign was on and the flight attendant announced that the plane was about to land. That was my signal to prepare for a different life as I reached the other side of the Pacific Ocean. I took out my phone and put a different sim card in it. It's still the same phone, but now to contact me, the numbers to dial starting with 765. I noticed the announcement from the pilot was in English, and there was no one else around for me to speak in Mandarin anymore. I told myself to get mentally prepared to interact with people that did not know me before I was 27 years old and call me Yi-Fan instead of 逸凡.
The airplane landed. I looked at my phone, and now I was 12 hours slower than the time zone that I was in this morning. It felt like I was at the completely opposite end of the world.
Me, the Only Correlation Between My Two Worlds
The first few times when I had to switch 180 degrees like this, I felt excited and adventurous. My adrenaline was pumping hard. I also did not care too much about people who didn't quite understand me in English. "One day they will." I was thinking to myself positively.
What I did not expect was, after more than 7 years, this switching process did not get easier as I got more practice. I know, just the idea of three flights and 30 hours of traveling back home is exhausting. It wasn't my first time doing this, though. And yet this time my heart felt heavier than before. I had accepted the fact that I will never in America completely understand or share the same feelings towards some cultural references, whichever lines from a movie or a song people refer to. And I am okay with that now. But what is harder for me to accept is, it's getting harder for me to switch back to 逸凡 completely. Little by little, I feel like I’m starting to lose my old self.
These past two summers when I went back to Taiwan, multiple clerks from various stores commented on my "accent" in Mandarin and doubted if I was a local. The first time that happened, I felt amused. But by the third time, I felt scared. Am I an outsider now even in my homeland? I also lost touch with the latest slang in Mandarin that people were using and had to ask my friends to explain them to me like I was a foreigner. I went to karaoke with friends and found so many new bands whose songs I was not able to sing along with.
I just feel really confused.
My two worlds are so clear cut from each other. Two sim cards, two languages, two social lives where the people that I interact with only interact with me and do not really know the circle of my people from the other side. Two different ways to think, and two different ways to live lives. Two names and two identities.
I am the only correlation amongst these two worlds. The only thing that is not clear cut is me. I was trying to make them clear cut from each other but I failed. The truth is, I am getting worse at it. I felt like I am standing alone in the limbo, not fully feeling belonging to either side. And it feels lonely.
Grafting
鳳梨釋迦（Fènglí shìjiā, atemoya） is a type of fruit I used to eat back in Taiwan. I always find the name of it in Mandarin interesting. The first two characters "鳳梨 (fènglí)" means "pineapple,", and the last two characters "釋迦 (shìjiā)" means "sugar apple." I've never seen a sugar apple in any groceries here in Indiana. It is one of my favorite fruits and it tastes sweet and mushy with lots of pits in it. But don't offer it to Buddha at your family shrine because the Buddha might view it as an insult since it looks like the buddha's head.
So the name of atemoya in Mandarin, "鳳梨釋迦（Fènglí shìjiā）" tries to tell people that it tastes both sour like the pineapple and sweet like the sugar apple. Ambiguously, atemoya is not really a combination of pineapple and sugar apple. However, atemoya is a product of combination of different fruits. It's because of this process of combining different fruits that makes atemoya taste so unique and became popular in Taiwan. Taiwanese people are really into combining different fruits together and see what new fruits it will turn out to be.
(Photo Credit: Google Image)
This whole process is called "graft." I learned about this term in English from this book called "Translating Myself and Others." However, the author, Jhumpa Lahiri, did not use this word to refer to a biological procedure, but to her own experiences growing up and living in different cultures.
And it dawned on me. I am actually going through this similar "grafting" process as well.
"Yi-Fan" in Indiana is a new branch which is grafting on my Taiwanese core "逸凡." And to prepare for this grafting process, some old branches need to be trimmed out first. But it is scary to cut off the old branches. The tree starts to look different from its old time. And what if nothing else grows out of the trimmed spots and the tree gets wounded?
It is scary to realize that I think differently now from my past self. Was I wrong before or am I wrong at the current moment?
It is terrifying to notice that I might from now on always think or act a bit differently from people around me no matter where I am. Am I the weird one or are they?
I am worried if I am too different from my family and old friends now. What if I lose them?
I am tired of feeling like I don't fully belong to a place and live only half of my life all the time.
There is no guarantee that after the grafting process the fruit will taste better. But I want to believe that it might be. And it is the only way to connect my two worlds and maybe the correlation in between will get bigger. Some new buds might sprout out from this correlation. They grow and blossom into flowers that people from either side of the world haven't really seen. The flowers stand there, not asking for any labels or approval, but wishing to be appreciated and witnessed for their uniqueness and beauty.
I feel a sense of total freedom and that I belong everywhere.
May this grafting destiny always allow me to see the world with a fresh pair of eyes.
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