What I Learned in Hualien (or) Under the Table

Our devoted readers may have noticed a glaring absence of posts in myself and Lindsey's blogs of late. This is because of one single and absolutely annoying reason: it is graduate school application season. I can think of no worse way to spend my last few weeks in Taiwan than writing these asinine personal statements: advertisements that I crave the judgment of others and which do little more than re-package my long string of mediocrities until they shine like the brand-spanking-new attributes of a person worthy of studying at the world's most exhaustingly pompous institutions.

I have, due to some financial and personal reasons, decided to go home for some much-needed emotional down time and an even more desperately needed requisition of living funds. Determined that I have what she called "one really good memory before you leave Taiwan," last weekend Maini dragged me away from the rigor of selling myself for a trip to Hualien, on the eastern coast of the island. It is a beautiful place - pictures will follow, pursuant to the much-called-for truce in the war between blogger.com and the dial-up internet - and we had a beautiful time. We had foot massages, traipsed up and down the seaside on a rented scooter, and even had a personal driver (the result of some strange mix-up with the tour group regarding our vegetarianism; I still don't completely understand it) who took us on our own private tour of the breathtaking Taroko Gorge.

Over lunch at Starbucks on the second day we somehow found our conversation turning to the subject of censorship in the Chinese mainland. Fan though I am of the Chinese people (usually) no one will ever call me a proponent of communism, and I told her how sad it often makes me to think of my friends on the other side of the strait. China can get richer and richer, I said, but unless something changes I'm afraid that the friends I love so dearly still won't be free.

"Well at least they have you," she said, and with her sweetly innocent smile and in her sweetly innocent English she continued, "maybe you can make a difference under the table."

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to "make a difference," especially in the light of these retarded personal statements I have to write for grad school; why exactly is it that I want to study Chinese? I can vaguely remember wanting to use it to do some good in the world, back in the days before exhaustion, the GRE, and the Analects took over all of the free neurons in my brain, but is it really even possible? Or desirable? Who am I to preach the benefits of democracy or the delicious possibilities that arise when we focus on the good in people instead of the bad and actually give them the benefit of the doubt?

But when I looked at Maini sitting across from me, when I counted the amazing friendships that I have forged across some of the stiffest and most inflexible cultural boundaries in the world, I realized that yes, it was possible to make a difference. Not just me, mind you, but me and Maini. Me and Maini and everyone who makes the effort to step outside their own comfort zones and reach out to another person. Everyone who realizes that it really is possible to transcend our differences because we are, deep down, pretty much all the same. People like us, we're making a difference under the table. And if you're one of those power hungry war mongerers, if you think money is more important than world peace, if you're so attached to your own way of thinking that you find it impossible to love another human being not only in spite of their being different than you but actually because of it, then you'd better get out of our way. The best you can do is build the tables, but we're busy building bridges.