An 18 year old woman, and the eldest of six children, has just married. She is born in the year of the horse (屬馬) in Beijing, born under the Republic of China (ROC). Her husband is from Jiangxi, a pilot for the ROC army. She takes care of her youngest sibling, only a child. Meanwhile, she prepares to give birth to her first child, also a girl. She names her 懷平 -- Peking Nostalgia -- since she will soon be leaving her home for Taiwan. The Communist Party has just defeated the Kuomintang forces, and they are ready to flee, so she bids farewell to her hometown.
An 18 year old boy prepares to go to college, also born in the year of a horse. He is gay and begins to date a man. The boy is from California, and his partner is from England. The boy celebrates his graduation with his family and is happy to know he's going to university. He bids a farewell before moving into the student dormitory.
The woman and boy's paths cross when the boy is born. She is 60 years his senior and his paternal grandmother. Her name is Judy, the English name she got when she came to the United States, and my name is Jason, the English name I was given at birth.
I am 9, and she is 69. Every summer, Judy comes to stay with my brother and me. She cooks for us her specialty - 蘿蔔絲餅, 雞肉湯麵, and fruits plus yogurt. Every meal, she rings a bell signifying it's lunch, and we come running. She reminds us to drink our milk for fear we won't grow tall. But, she also treats us to some junk food. While we are in summer school, she drives her grey Sabre to McDonalds to buy Beanie Babies sold in the McDonalds Happy Meals. Although my parents divorced, Judy still took it upon herself in raising the children, regardless of legal ties. Blood, to her, flowed deeper than marriage. She not only raised her siblings, but her own children, and her own children's children.
One summer, she teaches my brother and me how to ride a bike. She pushes me from behind and I fall. We keep going until I turn my head back to tell her "我快學到了" - I've almost learnt it! only to find that she is 50 meters behind me. Every morning after I learned how to ride the bike, she walks beside me while I ride my bike for two miles around the block. After we get home, for breakfast, she makes her yogurt specialty and I drink my glass of milk. During lunch, her other specialties, and my glass of milk. This is our summer routine.
Judy is getting older. She finally moves back to her ancestral home in China - to Beijing - after 50 years of absence, and the summers are spent without her. She said she was always a Beijing girl; said she loved that city even though it had changed so much from her childhood. I go visit her once when I am 15. It's dirty and undeveloped. There are dirt roads and bikes everywhere. It's foggy. I don't understand the appeal of this city. She cooks her specialties for me again, just like she used to in those summers.
I am 19. There is an event in Taiwan honoring fallen soldiers during the period right after the KMT fled to Taiwan - the same exodus that Judy and her husband was part of. Her husband -- my paternal grandfather -- is one of the fallen soldiers. I see her standing there with pride and sorrow at the loss of her late husband. She was widowed with her five children at a young age. At the ceremony, her children, of which include my father, stand beside her at the ceremony in tears celebrating the father they barely knew, and the grandfather I never knew.
I am 23. There is a family reunion in California, where Judy, her five siblings, and all of their descendants gather. There are about 80 people. The first time the entire family is together after 80 years. We spend a weekend together sharing stories of our past, a past littered with separation and loss; the pain worn heavily on the faces of Judy's generation, but the courage to tell their stories. I'll never forget Judy's story. She left all she had, including her own siblings, in search of safety. Her siblings had been separated for 30 years before their reunion in the United States. I understood now why family mattered to her, why she came over every summer despite my parents' divorce, why she took care of us as if we were her own blood, why she cooked us her dishes and poured us milk.
I am 26. She is 86. I have moved to Singapore and Judy is still in Beijing. I go visit her by myself. Beijing is so different. Where there was once dirt, there is now pavement. Cars replaced all the bikes. The air quality improved. Beijing has modernized, and the pace has sped up. But perhaps, it was too fast for Judy. She paces slowly in the grand shopping plaza while the busy city whisks by her. It's hard to keep up here as an elder, so she moves to Taiwan under supervision of her kids.
She moves into in an old people's home in Tamsui, Taipei. I used to go to the Tamsui riverfront as a kid with my cousins for the carnival-style games in the night market. After living in Singapore, then Hong Kong, I get a deeper appreciation for Taiwan, and go quite often. Every time I go, I go see Judy once. Ten or so times I go, each time eating with her and staying with her in Tamsui. Sometimes we go for a walk down by the harbor, reliving my experiences as a kid, and sometimes we stay in the old people's home and watch movies. Each weekend I spend there I chat with her and hear stories of her childhood and adulthood, coming in pieces since even she -- having lived a full life in different places -- can barely remember her life. She still remembers me, and my childhood: the countless times she cooked for me, teaching me to ride a bike, and buying Beanie Babies.
Those are the last and best years I spent with her. Despite being a generation apart, our paths crossed again in Taiwan. Maybe that's a reason I have a strong connection to Asia. While my childhood memories of her seemed distant, moving to Asia brought those back, and created new ones, and we became closer during my visits. The world works in a way that is unpredictable but comforting. It brings people together in ebbs and flows. The Chinese have a word for this - 緣分 - roughly translated as "fate." I spent the time I needed to with her, and was physically close to her for the last two years. 緣分.
I am 28. She is 88. "8" is a lucky number in Chinese. It's her funeral weekend. We hold her ceremony, then cremate her body. Her ashes are split into three sets. One set gets buried next to her late husband whose grave is in Taipei, in a graveyard to honor fallen soldiers. One set gets buried next to her mother -- my great grandmother -- back in the United States, where she'd lived for the majority of her life and rekindled with her family. The remaining ashes get scattered into the ocean, just off the coast of the Tamsui Harbor. As we scatter the ashes, I watch them scatter into the wind, and touch the surface of the sea. As it does, it slowly sinks to the bottom, returning back to the Nature from which she was born, forever a part of this Harbor. The harbor of my childhood. Perhaps that's why I feel such a strong connection to this place.