As a 10-year-old in 2020, moving to Taipei, Taiwan at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic was a means to escape the confinements of quarantine and online school. At the time, I didn’t think much about how my life would change. It was only when the plane landed and the humid air grazed my skin that I really started processing that I had moved across the world to a place I had never permanently lived before. Despite my familiarity with Taiwan and the way my Taiwanese parents raised me under their own traditional upbringing, nothing could’ve prepared me for the way my life was flipped upside down.
Instead of the calm, wide roads that led into my neighborhood in America, the streets in Taipei were bustling with city life — zooming motorbikes, earnest grandmas trying to sell their vegetables behind food stands and wobbly buses squeezing through narrow roads. Rather than waking up every weekend to watch movies in our sun-filled, spacious living room, Saturdays were reserved for loud family gatherings in worn down traditional restaurants where relatives would scold me for getting so skinny.
Walking through the streets, I would observe waiters casually conversing with their customers and girls my age laughing in roadside ice cream shops at night. There seemed to be this seamless, effortless connection between the people in Taiwan, and for a 10-year-old girl like me who had just moved to this lively city from the calm Bay Area, it was this close-knit sense of community that confused me the most. It just wasn’t something I was used to, and I had no idea how to become a part of it.
Thus, every time my international school classmates in Taiwan would ask me where I was from, my answer would always remain constant: “America.” It was like my shield of armor. I couldn’t fit into this community — didn’t understand how to get closer to this place and the people residing in it — because it wasn’t where I was from. I had a home separate from here — a home 13 hours and 6,500 miles away.
My American identity stayed with me until my family decided to move back to America a year later when I was in sixth grade. Back in the Bay Area, I blended in better with my American schoolmates and felt less like an outcast. It affirmed my belief that I was American — that my Taiwanese background was just that: a background, not a part of who I actively was.
But this summer, when I had the opportunity to live in a Taiwanese middle school for two weeks and teach the local kids English, it all shifted.
Living in a three-story, two-bedroom dorm with 17 other people was a reach from comfort, but it was the perfect place for seeking spontaneous experiences that gave meaning to an otherwise mundane routine. On weekdays, I worked with other Taiwanese-American volunteers to teach students English, and on weekends, we would tour the small city around our school together, visiting familiar night markets and malls while occasionally scouring through convenience stores as a group.
One Sunday, on the way back from a day of shop-exploring, we ran into a cleaning lady in the bathroom of a metro station. She seemed to be older than my grandma, but her voice still exuded a bright, youthful energy as she said, “You girls speak English so naturally,” while sweeping the floor. That comment took me by surprise — the people I knew in Taiwan usually praised me only for my proficiency in Mandarin, because they viewed me as an American, and therefore a native English speaker. I responded, “Thank you, we’re from America, and we’re just here for the summer as volunteer teachers.”
Her facial expression changed into one of curiosity when she replied, “Wow, that’s so cool, I thought you guys were from Taiwan. You’re mandarin sounds so native, there’s no accent.” I rushed to thank her for the compliment — this was the first time I had ever been perceived as Taiwanese in this country. And with that, it felt like a gust of fresh wind had blown open the set of doors I had so desperately tried to unlock that year in Taiwan. With her words, maybe I wasn’t as different from this place as I thought. Then, she placed her broom down, smiled warmly up at us, and said, “You girls keep learning and growing. Taiwan will always be open to you.”
In the following days after my interaction with the cleaning lady, I started viewing Taiwan more actively in relation to myself. As I taught my students, I saw their dynamic personalities reflected in my own through their unfiltered reactions that led them to speak without raising their hands. As I conversed with sociable locals on the streets, I discovered that I possessed the same curiosity about the people I encountered. And as I continued walking down the endless streets of Taiwan, I was finally able to connect myself with the vibrant culture lacing the country, when I distinguished it in the way I’m able to loudly present myself to the world and embrace my individuality.
Five years later, living in America as a 10th grader, I’ve learned to love the different ways my Taiwanese and American backgrounds blend together, thanks to the continuously growing amount of people and memories holding me in between these two countries.
As a 10-year-old in 2020, I thought that I could only be from one place, and could only feel a sense of home from one area in the world. But as a 15 year old in the summer of 2025, I learned that my belonging didn’t have to be defined through societal standards or affirmed through social acceptance. My experiences living everyday life in Taiwan, gossiping with my students in a mix of our languages and laughing with locals who tried to help my volunteer friends and I figure out the public transportation, ultimately made me re-discover how connected I was to this country. Thus, I came to the conclusion that I was allowed to just feel a sense of unique, personal closeness to a place instead — for its culture, people, environment and the memories it holds.
Now, I understand that I had never needed to completely fit in or understand the community — Taiwan had always been a part of who I was, just in a way I hadn’t been able to find back then. Though I still understand that there is and always will be some amount of distance between me and Taiwan it no longer bothers me that I don’t fit entirely into one place. Instead, I embrace the fact that my identity is shared among Taiwan and America, two opposite places in the world where I’m from.
