Categorized | Features

Building Bridges

By Vivian Lee, Taipei American School

vivian 1By the age of 14, I had lost a sense of home. I no longer knew where I belonged nor did I understand the surroundings around me. I was sick of the humidity that clung to my skin and the smog that filled up my nose on a day-to-day basis. Adding to my dilemma, it had been my 4th transfer to a new school in three years. I was utterly and completely lost in a place that was so foreign to me. That is why it is appropriate to say that I have experienced my fair share of the different kinds of education in Taiwan — American schools, bilingual schools, private schools, and even your average local school. I experienced how Taiwan’s education differed by location, by class, and by culture for such a small country. Looking back, I am actually quite privileged to have experienced a culture shock at such a young age.

Here I am defining privilege not in terms of how rich you are in material possessions, but in experience, love, and care. I do not resent or regret any of the decisions that were made for me at all, but it took a lot of thinking to let go of the so-called “trauma” in my past experiences. I think what set my educational history apart from most of my other peers is the age that I started my transition. Mandarin, as most people know, is an extremely difficult language to pick up. It is embarrassing to say that even though I am fully Taiwanese, and spent every summer in Taiwan and every Sunday going to Chinese school, I was still not fluent by the eighth grade, which is the age I entered my first year of a local school in Taiwan.

A summary of this first and final year would be: humiliation, bewilderment, and a smidgen of loneliness. Kids can be really mean, especially if you are that weird and an awkward foreigner that can barely speak or write Chinese, who was raised in a completely different culture. The workload is vigorous and difficult, as their curriculum centers around getting a full score on the high school entrance exam. Nevertheless, I learned the most valuable thing anyone could ever learn while living in Taiwan: how to speak and read Mandarin fluently. I reconnected with my roots and as a bonus, gained an important skill. I am no longer that person who cannot maintain a proper mandarin conversation with her grandmother, or that person who points at pictures on the menu of a beef noodle restaurant. Whether it be ordering from a Mandarin menu, getting my haircut at a salon or deciphering an article via Google Translate; the things I have picked up from a year in hell have benefited me for a lifetime.

And as my relationship with Taiwan may not have been love at first sight, I am sure that my growing attachment to this beautiful little island will make up for my years of resentment.

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