EAT

The wine-prepared crab at Jesse will change your life

I have some heavier topics to write about, but I'm just not feelin' it today. So, what I will say is that while I was away from Taiwan, I spent those weeks eating and drinking very well. Although this post isn't Taiwan related, as a foodie I feel like sharing some of the deliciousness I found abroad.

Jesse - First stop, Shanghai. Our flight was with China Eastern, which is not exactly a fantastic airline to take transpacific flights with - they don't give you individual TVs, the food is mostly OK, somewhat "eh" and a few items were downright inedible (that said, the hot bread rolls were great) and the movie selections on the overhead TVs are terrible. Otherwise it's fine, about the same as flying with any other airline. Because we had to transfer in Shanghai, we decided to plan our trip so as to spend a full day there (if you don't do this, China Eastern gives you a free hotel room, which we got on the way back. If you do, you have to book your own accommodation). I lived in China for a year but never went to Shanghai, so this was a chance to rectify that.

Taro in chive oil

We didn't eat much in the daytime, as our sightseeing made it difficult to get to restaurants during mealtime/opening hours. Our breakfast was Cafe 85, our lunch a snack at Starbucks (I don't really care for Starbucks but it was there and we needed the caffeine). For dinner, someone on Lonely Planet's erstwhile Thorn Tree helped me get reservations at Jesse, one of the best, and most famous, purveyors of Shanghainese cuisine in the city.

Braised pork

It was amazing. We tried gluten-stuffed Chinese red dates, cold salted chicken, braised pork (the fatty kind in the sweet, sticky sauce), eggplant in the same sauce, taro stewed in chive oil, cold-cooked crab (raw crab prepared ceviche-style in shaoxing wine) and the famous braised fish head in fried spring onions with cold Qingdao beer.

Delicious gluten-stuffed red dates in a flavorful glaze

Words cannot express how delicious the food was. The crab was breathtaking - the portion small and meat hard to get to (crab is like that) but the succulent meat you did get was so packed with memorable flavor, it'll make you salivate forevermore every time you think of it after you try it. In fact, I'm drooling right now. They tried to take it away as I was scraping the last of the roe and fat from the shell and my face briefly turned hideous and Gollum-like: you cannot take away MY PRECIOUS. Hiss. The braised pork (紅燒肉) had an undertow of complex flavor beneath the heavy sweet-savory flavor of the red sauce, and the meat was delectably tender. The gluten-stuffed dates were little red gems of delight. Imagine if pearls and rubies had flavors, each flavor delicious in its own way, and someone served you pearl-stuffed rubies for dinner. Like that. The taro was served in small half-rounds and was cooked to perfection: not too hard, not too sticky. It was velvety smooth in a buttery sauce redolent with chive, so rich it was like eating, well, liquefied velvet.

The codfish head in fried spring onions might be the most delicious thing in all of Shanghai

Glamour Bar - Later that evening we decided to have a drink, what with nightlife being the best part of Shanghai, despite our exhaustion and it being a Monday night. Glamour Bar is on the Bund - usually not my style, I'm not a Big Famous Nightspot In A Big Famous Place sort of gal, but rather a quiet pub, cafe or bistro with good drinks and food person - but despite its too-fancy address, it was accessible, well-known and walkable from our hotel. We only had one drink each - we were genuinely too tired for more and had already decided to take a taxi back to our hotel - but what I had was truly memorable: a cardamom mojito. Basically, a mojito with cardamom syrup. It sounds like it wouldn't work, it shouldn't work, it can't work, no way! - but it does. It was sublime. If you're ever in Shanghai I recommend stopping in just to sample that drink.

Also, for the Art Deco decor, including a huge round beveled mirror, the wine bar (which I want to check out someday), and drinks, snacks and water served in Art Deco etched glass.

The Art Deco fun of Glamour Bar

Cafe Gulluoglu New York - Gulluoglu is the famous baklava maker from the baklava and pistachio (fistik) capital of Turkey, Gaziantep. We stayed in their hotel while there and ate their divine baklava several times, and pounced on it when we saw it elsewhere in Turkey. Forget the sweet, sticky, hard-to eat stuff that just tastes of sugar. This manages to be sweet and soft but also flaky, with perfectly turned phyllo dough, pliant and flavorful pistachios (also, try the sour cherry visneli baklava, and grab a can of sour cherry juice. The stuff is addictive). I nearly wept tears of joy when we came upon Gulluoglu's Manhattan branch, not far from Rockefeller Center. We just had to go in, despite not being terrible hungry after lunch. You can get other food at Gulluoglu New York, but I recommend just filling up on baklava and getting a Turkish coffee, or two, or three.

By the way, anyone know where I can get good baklava in Taiwan? I have never been able to find it.

Veselka Bowery - (They have their own website but I can't get it to load) - this well-known Ukrainian establishment has expanded, and they now have branches beyond the original East Village location. The decor in the one on Bowery is simple and modern, with big windows and long, wooden tables. The pierogi are spectacular, with flavors you wouldn't imagine when cooking up the frozen cheese-and-potato basics in most supermarkets. Potato and cheese is there, but so is short rib and beet with goat cheese. We got a sampler, as well as some deviled eggs (two caramelized onion and bacon, two smoked salmon and caviar) and I got borscht. Another friend got potato-leek soup and truffle fries, because she clearly loves a well-done potato. This differs a bit from the menu online, but it was what was available when we were there.

I highly recommend the place - if you want something unique but don't want to go too weirdly ethnic, or have dining mates who aren't into things like tentacles, raw meat and hot sauce, but want a stellar meal, this is a great choice. Also, really nice to get good pierogies and borscht, two more hard-to-find things in Taiwan.

Nocturnem Drafthaus - Belgian beer is all over the place in Taipei, but we still enjoy drinking it and trying brands not as common or not imported to Taiwan. We found this place on New Year's Eve in Bangor and sidled up to the bar for some St. Feuillen Noel and Green Flash Double Stout  (Brendan had cider as he was driving later that evening). Always nice to find good beer places in smaller towns.

Dysart's and Governor's - I include these two because they're Maine culinary staples (we also went to Tim Horton's and got whoopie pies at a gas station, by the way). Dysart's is a truck stop outside Bangor that has turned into a popular restaurant in its own right, with preservative-free breads and desserts and the best corned beef hash, well...ever. Also, don't miss the cinnamon rolls. You can substitute them for toast with your meal, if you want to be super healthy! Governor's has solid, standard American fare - the thing that really recommends it is their desserts. They make a scrumptious graham cracker crust pie, and their mint chocolate chip pie has a similar crust...but in chocolate. Also, the gingerbread looks unforgettable.

Meskerem - (warning - the site plays music) - another thing you can't get in Taiwan is Ethiopian food. Trust me, I looked. We have a little tradition of always going to this restaurant in Adams-Morgan after our friends pick us up at the airport, which they pretty much always do, for a delicious dinner we can't get in Taipei. I recommend the kitfo, and get it super rare, even go raw, tartare-style, if you dare. The Yedoro Wat and Yebeg Alecha are also great. I liked the shurro wat (milled chick peas in berbere sauce) although our friend was less impressed. I strongly recommend getting a bottle of tej - honey wine, like mead - with your meal, and trying to sit at the more traditional low tables on the righthand side of the restaurant.

Another good place for Ethiopian is Dama on Columbia Pike, near the Sheraton. Go in the morning for Ethiopian coffee and pastry, or their range of Ethiopian breakfasts (foulle - fava beans with spices,  onion and tomato - and baguette is my favorite, and there is also a spicy egg dish that's great) - enter in the side through the market, not the main door. Don't worry if you're the only non-Ethiopians there. I often was when I lived nearby and nobody ever made me feel weird or unwelcome. In the same complex is Dama's restaurant, which consistently serves up superb Ethiopian, the best in Arlington if you ask me, and patronized by the local Ethiopian community. It's definitely not on the tourist or yuppie urbanite maps: I found this place because I lived right down the street for a few years.

Tallula - fine southern-inspired cooking with a fantastic brunch in north Arlington (Metro Clarendon) - we had brunch here with relatives. Absolutely get the biscuits and gravy with poached eggs if it's available (the gravy is maple-sweet with a spicy, meaty undertow). They also have scrapple (for real), shrimp & grits, cheesy grits and more, and that's just their brunch menu. Very kid-friendly. Excellent Bloody Marys.

Me Jana - we had dinner with friends at this Lebanese place in Arlington (you can tell our DC life was and is kind of Arlington-centered), moving away from our usual get-together at Lebanese Taverna. The food was fantastic - I can't even recommend one thing. It was all so good! We got the family-style tasting menu: kibbeh, fattoush salad, tabbouleh, falafel, sujok, grape leaves, babaghanoush, hummus, cheese rolls, fassouleh, lebneh and a pile of delicious meats (the lamb chops were especially good) with pilaf, and a great baklava for dessert. I also recommend trying one of their Lebanese wines. This place is also very convenient to the Metro, has free parking and is very accommodating of groups and children (they have a children's menu). For large groups including children it's a great choice.

洋鬼子 (Foreign Devil) and NEW YORK PRIDE, BITCHES!

Just thought I'd show off the "costume" I actually wore on Halloween (which was a work day) - I'm a Foreign Devil!

Also, this is post #666. So that's appropriate.

By the way - this is how New Yorkers respond to a crisis.  Also, this. Yeah, I agree with the cutout of that fat guy. F*** you, Sandy! Also, as per the Post-It, I'm also happy George Bush isn't President anymore. For this and other reasons. If anyone was wondering - if anyone reading this beyond real life friends even knew that I was a native New Yorker (state, not city) - my friends and family are fine. Parents don't have power, but they're getting by, friends are generally doing OK although things are rough right now.

In related NEW YORK PRIDE! news -

Along the lines of this clip (at about 6:30m) not long ago I managed to shock my husband for the first time in years. It's not like he doesn't know I'm a New Yorker - the first time he visited New York City it was with me. I speak pretty standard American English, though, with traces of a New York accent coming through only in very select words, and only very lightly ("water" is one such word). Friends not from those parts have told me that my accent thickens when I am in the city/tri-state area.

I guess Brendan, with his complete lack of a Maine accent and inability to imitate one, just wasn't aware that while I don't have the New York/Long Island/New Jersey amalgamation of accent-tacular accentiness, I can imitate it.

And the other day, I did.

I said something along the lines of:


"Yo, come down to Luigi&Schlomo's Secondhand Mattress Discounter and Pawn Shop. We got the mattress for you. Exit 18 off San

dusky Parkway in Poohackus. / Barbara. BARBARA! I'm talkin' to you! Don't you see me talkin' to your face? Where is the KFC Barbara? You didn't get the KFC! What are the kids gonna eat for breakfast! Goddamnit Barbara! OK OK, I'll do your commercial. OK. Where's the microphone? Mikey, will you SHUTTUP? JESUS! OK. I need some water. Thanks. Here we go. 'Vote for Al or Paulie gets it. PAID FOR BY FRIENDS OF SENATOR AL D'AMATO.'How's that? OK. BARBARA!!"

Which, you know, totally rude and stereotypical, except I'm from there so I figure it's OK. Just like how I'm part Polish so I'm allowed to think "Polack Swamp" is a funny name, but you're not.

I pulled the accent together from radio and local TV commercials I heard growing up, including ones for Al D'Amato's re-election campaigns, Kyle's mom on South Park, a pinch of my Grandma (maternal, not paternal), and my friend's mother from Syosset. 

Brendan: O_O

"You sound like the people on TV. Only TV people have that accent!"

Oh no, sweetie.

Oh...no no no.

All that is to say, as one of you, I'm pullin' for ya, New York. In my own "yo, one twist of fate and I could've grown up talkin' like that" way. You too, Jersey, even though most New Yorkers don't even want to believe you're a real place. They think we upstaters are bumpkins, too, don't listen to them.

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The Various Kinds of Me

So our course is finally (finally!) done and I'll have more time for blogging from now on. I have a lot to say about Turkey but I might wait a few days until we're in Maine and have some time to relax to write up my thoughts on our time there. I still feel more attached to Taipei, but a month in Istanbul with an honest-to-goodness apartment, social life (everyone on our course got along extremely well - the chemistry was just phenomenal and we went out for lunches and every weekend), routine, dinners at home and neighbors who recognized us...well, that made me feel like a part of me has experienced Istanbul expat life, too.

I really adored it - Istanbul is an awesome city. Gorgeous and varied architecture, from Byzantine churches to grand mosques to 18th and 19th century European grandeur to touches of Oriental Express Art Nouveau to pre-war rowhouses to modern concoctions. Phenomenal food is everywhere, as well as fantastic shopping. Hills which are hell to climb but afford dazzling views. Friendly people, lots of street cats that are clean and well-fed (but not owned by anybody). All that is topped off with a nightlife that puts both DC and Taipei to shame - it's on par with New York but in some ways better - there is an entire neighborhood (Beyoglu around Istiklal Caddesi) on the Golden Horn that goes nuclear at sundown, with seemingly infinite choices for bars, dancing, cafes and food. Not even New York has something like that (although some places light up more than others). Let's just say that we partook generously of it - which is a lot more fun when there are ten of you and everyone needs to blow off some stress. I would totally stay - even live - in Istanbul again.

Now we're "home" - or at least on our way. Yesterday afternoon we landed at JFK and met my parents, spending the night before heading back to the airport (where we are now) to visit B's parents in Maine.

Being home, even for just an overnight - we return to my parents' next week - has made me think about who I am in Taipei, who I was in Istanbul and who I am in the USA. The Jenna who ate her mom's eggs, bacon and blueberry muffins this morning and helped putter around the kitchen she knows so well, who cuddled the two cats and took a lovely post-flight bath in the huge upstairs bathtub is basically an adult - and much more mature - version of the Jenna who last lived in that house in high school. The Jenna who lives in Taipei sometimes feels like a woman who experienced entirely different formative years than she did. You wouldn't have expected that Jenna to have grown up in a small town, and she's really nothing like the dorktacular girl that went to high school in that same town.

The first Jenna is the one who was always a little eccentric but is ticking all the right boxes as she grows older. It's the one who had a big, local, family wedding to a beloved-by-parents guy. It's the one who knows how to build a hearth fire and which apples are the best to pick, who knows a lot about LL Bean winter gear and is no stranger to chasing deer off the lawn. It's the one that would have probably made a really good school teacher or office worker and wouldn't have traveled that much outside Western Europe, and would probably own a house and car now.

The second one is more than a little eccentric without actually being insane. She's the one who had a big but non-traditional wedding in a crazy fuchsia dress to an awesome, adventuresome guy who also travels the world. It's the one who knows her way around an urban jungle and can tell you where to find the best siphon coffee bar, who knows how to bargain in a foreign bazaar and is no stranger to the realities of city life or how things (generally) work in foreign countries. It's the one who will never work in a public school (teachers deserve more support and higher salaries than what they earn in that system - and I deserve better, as well) and couldn't stand office life. It's the one who regularly gives her parents heart palpitations with her travel choices...and may never own a house or car (although an urban or semi-urban townhouse someday is not out of the question).

The first one is familiar with the way the light hits the Hudson River in the morning and lives near New York City without actually visiting it often. The second can tell you what it smells like as you bike along the trail from Jingmei to Zheng-da and stops in New York whenever she can. The first speaks French. The second forgot most of her French and speaks Chinese.

It's hard to explain, and harder still to draw a clear line, but it's there - Taipei Jenna isn't quite the same as Hometown Jenna. Neither were the same as DC Jenna - that one dated a few inappropriate guys, had a lot of friends but not a raging social life, worked in a cubicle and had a lot of growing up to do, and went out on the weekends to nightspots she didn't even like all that much. And of course there was Guizhou Jenna and India Jenna, and more recently, Istanbul Jenna.

They're all different women, and that's not just the result of growth and the passing of time. Their different facets come out not just as I grow, but as I live in different places. When I come home, the old me comes out a little more (ever heard the old story about how when you're around your parents, you revert to a lot of your childhood behaviors and ways of dealing with them despite the fact that you're all adults?), and the me who lives in Taipei recedes a bit.

Everyone is influenced by where they are and the places where they live or visit - not even necessarily for a long time. A week in Bangladesh could very well blow the mind of a lot of people I know (it certainly blew mine). I do think that expat life magnifies and deepens that. When you live in another country, especially one with a wildly different set of cultural norms, you absorb more of that place and change as a result. I have felt for years that my study abroad time in India is what knocked the Hometown Jenna's pinball down a wildly different course. She's the reason why Guizhou Jenna and Taipei Jenna got the chance to exist. Taipei Jenna made Istanbul Jenna possible. This is hardly a Nobel-worthy insight, but it's one I'm writing about now because my visit home made me more aware of it.

I quite liked Istanbul Jenna, though. She was a hard worker with a lot of friends who knew how to party. I hope she sticks around for a bit in Taipei!

Home Is Where the Lao Jia Is

Photo of colorful yarn from here

"I should let you know," I said recently on the first day of a new class, "that I'll be leaving for a few months in August. I'll come back around mid-October."

"Really?" my new students exclaimed. "Why...how did you get such a long vacation and where are you going?"

"One of the advantages of my job is that I can take all the leave I want, as long as I let the company know well in advance. I don't get paid for it, but that's OK. I'd rather get more unpaid leave than less paid leave. As for why and where, I'm going to Turkey for two months and then home to visit my parents and in-laws."

"Why Turkey?" came the obvious question.

"Because my mother's family is Armenian from Turkey," I said, writing out Armenian (亞美尼亞人) in Chinese on the board as I said it - nobody in Taiwan knows it automatically in English. "Many Armenians used to live there, but in 1915 the Turks started to kill them and force them out, and many died and others ran away. My family came to America. So you could say that southern Turkey is my ancestral home," I replied as I wrote "ancestral home" on the board and invited students to guess what it meant.

"Is it like 老家?" one student surmised.

"Yes, exactly. I'm returning to my lao jia for a visit."

There was a pause.

"Man, I sound Chinese," I said as they laughed.

Since then, two thoughtful blog posts I've read recently - Home is the Lint in My Pocket fromOffbeat Home and Home and Books by Kathmeista have gotten me thinking about home. (Both are definitely worth your reading time). Home as a person who has a lao jia - most Americans do, but few ever think to visit it, and many have no idea where it might be - home as a person currently dealing with a family illness (fortunately all signs point to it being something we'll get through with a happy ending), and home as both a traveler and expat.

A lot of people write about where they fit in (or how they fit in to a new community), where they're from or how they define "home". I see it a little differently - I feel as though I have many homes, with different connections to all of them. Instead of viewing these connections as a web, I view them as different skeins of yarn with varying thicknesses, textures and colors. I'm connected to all of them, just in different ways and with different feelings attached to each. I'm closer to some than to others, but no matter how pale or thin the thread, there's still some slender attachment.

As many Americans do, I technically have more than one lao jia - I can count Armenia via Turkey, Poland, Switzerland and the UK/Ireland among them, as well as a trickle of Iroquois blood. The reason I tend to be the most attached to my Armenian heritage is not out of any feeling of superiority: simply that it's the one with the closest generational association. My grandfather still speaks Armenian, after a fashion. I have no other living relatives whose native language is Polish, or Swiss, or Iroquois or Gaelic (although on one side, many speak some Polish as a result of growing up in a community of Polish immigrants). We still set out hummus, babaghanoush, lahmajoun, tabbouleh, shish kebab, pilaf, bowls of olives, string cheese and cheorog at family functions. While kielbasa, pierogies and galumpkies have made an appearance on the other side, it's far more rare.

That said, I'm also proud to be Polish (kielbasa! yay! If I ever do go vegetarian, kielbasa along with lamb kebab and lahmajoun may be the last painful threads to cut) and do fully intend to visit Poland one day, in the not-too-distant future.

I've never been to Armenia, Mousa Dagh (where my Armenian ancestors are really from), Poland or Switzerland, but I feel connected to these ancestral homes with slender but vibrantly-colored thread, a connection that seems tenuous but, like a dark dye, has seeped into me in ways that I'm still discovering. The yarn seems thin, but the importance of the tie presents in its brilliant hues. I'm sure that when we do make the journey to Mousa Dagh later this year - this year! We already have tickets to Istanbul! - that I'll discover even more ways in which I'm tied to this place I'd never laid eyes on before.

I've found that many Taiwanese and Chinese people feel similarly: they may have never been to their ancestral home, but making a trip there, if done, is not something to be done lightly. Their family may have lived in Taiwan or a province of China that they're not originally from for hundreds of years and even tens of generations, but they can still tell you, if not the village of their origin, then the region or province. Even Taiwanese who in every other respect do not think themselves Chinese are often able to say "Well, I'm Taiwanese and this is my country, but my great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents came from Quanzhou (in Fujian)."

I have two hometowns - Saugerties, NY and Highland, NY. My thin, white connection to Saugerties is really just in childhood memories: picking all of mom's tiger lilies to make a bouquet. Roller skating in the kitchen. Playing with my friend Peter up the street. Picking some sort of azalea and finding an earwig inside. Listening to Richard Marx (hey, it was the '80s) with friends from school. Winning a school award for art. The time my sister found the little cup of hydrogen peroxide that Mom was soaking earrings in, and drank it (they called poison control. She was fine). The time I filled the house with smoke trying to bake Jiffy Mix cornbread without permission. Mom's screaming and Dad's snapping to action when the cat brought home a still-living black snake.

A slightly stronger, but murkier, connection to Highland: my family still lives there in a lovely old farmhouse with all sorts of annoying quirks. I go home once a year or so to spend a week with them, and I enjoy several aspects of that time: crickets in the evening instead of traffic and neighbors shuffling about. Cooler, less humid weather. Waking up to American morning shows (totally vapid, but I have this thing where I like to watch them when I'm home). Trees and grass right outside.

My parents' beautiful rural backyard at our day-after-wedding brunch.

When I was going through adolescence, though, I can't say I held any warm feelings for the town. I didn't share the town's community values (conservative) or outlook (not inclined to celebrate learning, focused more on sports). School was very much a "why do kids needs all these 'arts' and 'multicultural studies'? When I was young we learned the three R's and if that was good enough for me then it's good enough for my kid!" I had friends, but we were more of a little group apart from others than among them: I just wasn't interested in the things that interested the town. You should have been there to see the shining of my eyes the day I was set to leave for college. I would miss my family but not the town. Highland taught me a lot about who I was by showing me what I didn't want to be, and while I visit home, I really restrict it to visiting my parents and the much cooler town of New Paltz down the road - I don't bother much with Highland. You can say I've never really looked back. I do like some small towns - New Paltz is great, and I find Bangor, ME to be really charming - just not Highland.

In contrast to the itchy woolen yarn in forgettable colors that connects me to Highland, I'm tied in several ways to my home during college - Washington DC and its surrounding area. I didn't like everything about GWU, but I did get a good education there, not to mention the chance to study abroad, live on my own and be exposed to an urban awakening that has kept me a happy monkey in concrete jungles ever since. Could I have gotten a similar education for less than GWU's exorbitant price tag (though I was on a Presidential scholarship so I paid a lot less than many students there)? Yeah, but I met Brendan at GWU which is why I affectionately call him my "very expensive sweetheart"! Gee-dub wasn't perfect by any stretch, but it was cool and urban and without it I wouldn't have such a fantastic husband.

After a year in China, I returned and lived in nearby and just-as-urban Arlington, VA. For most of that time I rented a townhouse with others on Columbia Pike, and the safe-yet-multicultural, not-yet-gentrified, slightly gritty feel of the neighborhood weaseled its way into my heart with its downmarket charm, Ethiopian and Salvadorean restaurants, independent coffee shops and second run theater that serves alcohol. I made a lot of friends in that time and while I didn't care for my job in those years, I do look back on my social life in Arlington with a warm heart.

More distinctive threads connect me to India and China. In her story "The Long Conversation", Deryn P. Verity says, "...but the cliche is true: your first foreign country speaks to you as no subsequent one can. Although you may come to prefer life in other places, first patterns persist, providing insistent, if faded, touchstones for everything to come."

India was like that for me - I can't say whether I do or don't prefer life in other places, because my experience in India was so life-changingly different that "preference" doesn't really come into it. Simply put, India is the touchstone by which I measure everything that has come after. It's not a matter of preference. It's a matter of what is. I got my first taste of children on dusty side streets shouting questions at me just for being foreign: Sister, Sister! Are you liking our idli-dosa? I lived a vegetarian life in which I was woken up by chickens cawing and put to bed by goats bleating. I cooled off on the hottest days by sitting on the floor. I learned to use a squat toilet and got my first taste of true bargaining in a riotous market. You may think you bargain in flea markets in the states - you don't. I learned to enjoy Saturday nights that consisted of watching TV with Amma and Shiva and going to bed at 10, before the current would go out. Do I "prefer" life in Taiwan? I can't honestly say. India was a home to me when I was so desperate to see something of the world, a home to me in that I lived in a family home and, for all intents and purposes, had a family there.

A taste of a different kind of urban life in Madurai, India

China was not as much of a life-changing experience. If India is the touchstone for all future experiences abroad, China is anti-matter. Brown and gray, the frayed threads that connect me to China bring back memories of a Miao wedding in the hills, the best Sichuanese food of my life (although Tianfu in Dingxi comes close), friendly locals, fiery haw-berry brandy, seeing a giant roach while playing canasta with my roommate, watching horrendous state-sponsored TV, and memorable trips to Xinjiang and Xi'an. Drinking beer by the paved-over riverside and hiking in Phoenix Park and taking the bus to Guiyang just to eat pizza and have tea in the pagoda on the river. It reminds me of walking up the hill behind the department store, through the market and to Fragrant Mountain Temple, one of the few truly preserved temples in the country (covering over a temple in bathroom tile and calling it 'restored' does not count), and studying Chinese in the Guanyin shrine while drinking tea with Old Zhang.

Old Zhang at Fragrant Mountain Temple - Zunyi, China

But it also brings back memories of twice-contracted pneumonia, gray chicken feet in viscous soup, picking up my gloves warming on the charcoal heater only to find that they'd melted (I thought they were made of wool!), towels that moved water around but didn't absorb it, being put in a SARS quarantine and not being able to access news easily: I didn't learn that the USS Cole was bombed until I left the country months later. It reminds me of smoggy skies (if India is a touchstone, China is murky quartz) and box-shaped concrete behemoths lurking in the distance. It reminds me of buying jewel boxes topped with shards of priceless porcelain smashed during the Cultural Revolution. It reminds me of people who would overcharge me even after vigorous bargaining and of a blatant disregard for women's rights or respect for women's equality - more so than India. It reminds me of a scarred and saddened country with the worst air and water quality I've ever experienced - a country that I hope, for the sake of its 1.6 billion people, will throw off its sad 20th century inheritance and usher in a new government.

I can't say I loved China, or even particularly liked it, but I do have a lot of stories to tell (like the time I pooped on a pig, or the time I puked on a bus driver, or saw a Muslim cemetery upturned with a new housing development about to be plopped on top) and I can't say it didn't impact me. Was it "home"? Not by a long shot, but it was a kinda-sorta home for the time I was there and for the memories it brought me.

Which brings me to Taiwan. I've stayed here for nearly five years, and so, really, Taiwan is now my home. It will still be my home if we choose to leave, and I can't imagine leaving with no plans to return. I said the same thing about India, and I've been back four times, so I don't take those proclamations lightly. Taxi drivers who have an opinion on everything and ask me questions that would be rude by Western standards, the kids in my neighborhood who practice violin or piano (some are pretty good, others should honestly quit and find something they're more talented at), the pedestrian-unfriendly larger streets with their unrelenting scooter swervings and exhaust fumes and the quieter lanes where a sense of peace rises from the asphalt as I ride my bike through. The great seafood and etiquette-free but friendly demeanor of the people. Four and a half years of friends and experiences. The breathtaking views from the road up Hehuan Mountain and the slower pace of Pingdong life.

Taiwan is my home, in a way that no place has been since India and Washington, DC, and considering the portion of my adult life spent here, now approaching critical "I feel more at home when I get off the plane in Taoyuan than I do when I get off the plane in New York" mass, I feel like there's more than one thread connecting me. A blue-green thread of friends, a bright red thread of daily life and colorful festivals, a heathered thread of friendliness mixed with occasionally rude behavior (OK, not rude, just not polite by Western standards) and a pink fried pork colored thread of food. There are all sorts of tiny but unbreakable bits of fishing line hooking into me from living for years in Jingmei and watching the old folks who sit outside gossiping get older, the kids pushed around by grandmas, housewives or Indonesian nannies get older, stores opening and closing, being on a first-name basis with the 7-11 clerks, and being used to speaking Chinese outside home and work. If I ever moved back to an English-speaking country I swear I'd get jolted back to reality the first time I were to get in a taxi and try to give directions in Mandarin!

I do wish I could say "yes, this is my home". In her post, Kath talked about how Cornwall, New Zealand and Taiwan were all homes to her. In her "lint in my pocket" piece, the writer's home was clearly Guildford, England. My friend Emily talks of England and Australia as her twin homes (although after her latest stint in England she may be more inclined towards Australia).

I feel like I have multiple homes: Mousa Dagh; Poland; Saugerties; Highland; Washington, DC; Arlington, VA; Madurai, India; Zunyi, China; Taipei, Taiwan. I can't name a single one as my true home, and I can't say exactly how to prioritize one over the other. It's like they're all a giant knobby scarf, and I'm woven right in there. Or that they're all ropes for hanging trapezes as well as the colorful net below and I am the acrobat, swinging around to newer places and yet knowing that I am supported and in part defined by the places I've been.

They're all home, and where many people feel the need to be grounded, to have a place of origin or somewhere to come from and go back to, I feel better hurtling through mid-air, far from grounded, knowing that my multiple homes are swinging above me and knitted below me, and that with the experiences and knowledge they've provided I can safely swing to ever newer destinations.

Honeymoon Part I: The Best of Our New York and Washington DC Photos

Nobody can deface a subway advertisement quite like New Yorkers can.

A few interesting snapshots from the days before the wedding and our quick jaunt to New York and Washington DC with friends directly following the wedding:

Brendan's parents having dinner (appetizers are in the photo) at my parents' house the Thursday before our Saturday wedding. Note the matching shirts on both the moms AND the dads. Not planned, I swear!

We got married in Poughkeepsie New York, and so we took a walk on the new Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge, now a walking path/park with fine views of the Hudson River.

From here, Po-town doesn't seem quite so ugly (on the ground, much of it is a highway flanked with strip malls.)

The Mid-Hudson Bridge

After the wedding, we rented a car and drove to DC, which included a stop at the famous Arlington, VA "gas church". Note the gas station on the lower level. And yes, the Gas Church (Our Lady of Petrol?) is legitimately famous, though it's not known everywhere as the "Gas Church" as I call it. We used to live right up the street from it!

A cool dragon-inspired gate in DC's otherwise lackluster Chinatown (seriously, "Chinatown Attractions" include the traditional Chinese Fuddrucker's, the ancient Chinese Bed, Bath&Beyond and of course Chinese Starbucks.

What is now Chinatown used to be an otherwise normal neighborhood. This Wok 'N Roll (I only wish that name were a joke - and it's next to New Big Wong) was once the Surratt Boarding House, where Lincoln's assassination was planned.

The Navy Memorial's world map with view of the National Archives. Very feng-shui if you ask me.

Can you find the typo? I can!

Ford's Theater, with Emily and Becca on the right.

Ah, DC. Where the Crazies (and not-so-crazies) congregate to protest. This protester has had a manned station since the 1980s.

This horse is a fairly well-known DC landmark. Near it is a far funnier statue that, because of the particular reason why it's funny, I've chosen not to post here (northwest corner of Lafayette Park - see if you can find it).

What I love about DC (and New York) is the sheer amount of this kind of architecture - buildings spanning late 19th century, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, pre-war rowhouses, the works.

The World War II Memorial, which is...OK.

Honest Abe.

A young girl poses at the Lincoln Memorial

That evening we drove out to the 'burbs for a friend's birthday party, held for whatever reason out in Fairfax, VA (at a pretty good restaurant, at least). Meliheh seen here with Evan.

In New York, we enjoyed this establishment, with ornery old waiters and two kinds of beer: light and dark. Yes, it stayed open through Prohibition but was almost certainly not founded in 1854.

Ground Zero at sunset.

At a really good coffeeshop somewhere in lower Manhattan.

Being foreign, Emily didn't want to attract attention by looking like a tourist, and did her best to fit in.

Ah, Staten Island. Yeah, it basically looks like this.

Brendan on the ferry (because we had to play tourist)

Another classic Emily moment.

Emily and Becca outside the Stonewall.

Stone face near...I'm not sure actually.

Two graffiti'd buildings near Joseph's parents home in Soho. We are trying to figure out how to inherit his parents' apartment.

At Grimaldi's Pizza in Brooklyn (DUMBO I believe).

After a bit more Brooklyn Beer than is strictly advised.

Emily and Pizza

New York has its fair share of Crazies, too. This guy was down by Ground Zero and is honestly way more offensive than any mosque/community center could be.