by Ed Lin
There’s no neat way to eat zongzi, but whatever you do, chew slowly and taste everything in there. You can sense all the separate and sometimes contradictory components, and how they come together as a whole.
Taiwan is like a compact zongzi, tied up together whether we like it or not. The rice is the land. The melted pork fat is the humidity and precipitation. The yams are the benshengren, the “home-province people,” descendants of people who came to Taiwan from China before the Japanese colonization in 1895. Benshengren actually refer to themselves as “yams,” because Taiwan is shaped like one.
The taros are the waishengren, or “outside-province people,” people who came to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949. They are also known as “mainlanders,” even later generations born in Taiwan. They say China looks like a spade-shaped taro leaf, the Bohai Gulf corresponding to the indent by the stem.
The fungus and salted eggs are the Hakka, probably the only distinct ethnic group of Han Chinese that hasn’t been assimilated into the larger population. They are known for their hearty food and hearty people. Traditionally farmers, Hakka never bound their women’s feet, as they needed everyone to be mobile and working. Although Hakka can be benshengren or waishengren, those identities are secondary.
The pork represents the native Taiwanese, as the various tribes who lived here centuries before any Chinese arrived hunted wild boar, among other animals. They weren’t all hunters, of course, and most of them are gone. They make up only about 2 percent of the country’s population now. Dwayne’s people, the Amis, are one of fourteen recognized tribal groups. The government says the rest are extinct or too integrated to matter.
All of these groups have historically fought and struggled against each other over the years, and new events make sure that the pot’s stirred frequently. Announcements of new major highways might bring condemnations from the Indigenous Peoples’ Action Coalition of Taiwan if any sacred lands are involved. They usually are. Hakka are roused to action whenever the Hakka language (and dialects) are excluded from public discussion, or when their culture is marginalized. Benshengren, the yams, take to the streets whenever the subject of closer ties to China is brought up, as they are mostly against the idea that Taiwan is really a province of the People’s Republic. Waishengren, the mainlanders, are indignant that none of the other groups thank them for the economic miracle that has unfolded over the last forty years. They also don’t understand why nobody seems to appreciate the transition to democracy that they presided over—after the era of harsh martial law they had imposed.
My family was benshengren. My grandfather and grandmother had left the farms of Taichung County near the middle of Taiwan’s west coast in 1954, headed north for Taipei and started the food stall.
“Damned mainlanders,” my grandfather would call the waishengren. He would call them worse names, too. I asked him why he sold them food if he hated them so much. He told me to be nice to anyone who put money in my hand. It was the best advice he ever gave me.
It was difficult to take his hatred of mainlanders seriously, though. Most of our neighbors in the Wanhua District were waishengren. Also, grandfather’s number-one employee wasn’t my father: it was a mainlander, Frankie the Cat.
Julia and her family were also yams. Dancing Jenny was a Hakka. Song Kuilan and her family were mainlanders. Dwayne was a native Taiwanese and had taken his English name from Dwayne Johnson, with whom he shared Pacific Islander heritage.
Of course I didn’t think of my friends in a categorical sense, but then again, we never really had serious political discussions.
The mainlanders are mostly associated with the Kuomintang, or KMT, the political party that lost the Chinese Civil War and still claims it is the legitimate ruler of not only Taiwan, but its definition of China, which includes Mongolia and Tibet. The KMT was in power in Taiwan from 1945 until 2000. That was when the DPP, or Democratic Progressive Party, which is mostly backed by yams, won the presidential election. The DPP is known for seeing Taiwan as an independent country from China, and the eight years the party held office were the most combative with the mainland. The KMT came back to power in 2008, and China was happy again. Even though the Communists had fought a bloody war with the KMT, they were united in the view that Taiwan was an inalienable part of China.
Political candidates from these two major parties, the KMT and the DPP, know they have to appeal to anyone and everyone for the presidential election, so they soften up their stances and appeal to the four major population groups through endless campaigning and giving away food and prizes. The candidates say that they won’t declare independence for Taiwan and will seek more trade agreements with China to keep the mainlanders happy. They tell the benshengren in the Taiwanese dialect that they are native sons and daughters of Taiwan. They proclaim haltingly in Hakka that they carry the mountain songs in their heart as they help dye fabrics in the traditional blue. After donning aboriginal clothing, the candidates conclude that modern Taiwan still has much to learn from its original communities. They all promise to do something about the undocumented workers from Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. Then after the election, we all go back to being our parochial selves.
But what are we, really? Do we have a broader identity that covers us all? Someone came up with “New Taiwanese” as an umbrella term to include everybody, but that phrase fell out of use, mainly because it just sounded stupid. We are people who work hard and disagree about a lot of things. Luckily for me, everybody loves to eat, and no one ever says the food in Taiwan sucks.
THE SHOUTING OUTSIDE REACHED a new pitch. I drew back my bedroom shades and saw that the women were now each restrained by a stoic, silent man.
German Tsai, accompanied by one of his boys, came between the women and spoke too softly for me to hear. Open hands slid out from the sleeves of his linen jacket and gestured at one woman and then the other. He took off his sunglasses so they could see that he was sincere.
His underling produced two plastic bags. I couldn’t believe what German pulled out of one of them. A wrapped zongzi. He held it up in the sunlight as if it were a prism. He smiled and gave each woman a bag of zongzi.
The situation was defused by two bags of zongzi German had picked up for his crew. I’m sure that he could get another two bags with no problem.
I TURNED AWAY FROM the window. Now that I was wide-awake, I felt the weight of what I had to do. I wet a towel and wiped my face. I dressed in my least-wrinkled buttoned shirt, black slacks and good shoes. I didn’t eat anything, but I had half a cup of soy milk to coat my stomach. It was something my mother told me to always do because it could prevent stomach cancer. It hadn’t helped my dad, though.
It was about ten in the morning now, and I was on schedule to see the Huangs. I rolled my moped out. In the daylight my ride looked old and dirty. There was a big tear in the seat that I hadn’t noticed before. Overall it wasn’t much better than what I had been riding in high school. I’d told Julia that when I came for her, I’d be driving a red sports car. What would she think if she saw me, a college dropout, riding this thing? What would I think if I had seen her wearing next to nothing, slinging binlang?
WHEN THE HUANGS SOLD their Shilin Night Market stall ten years ago, they also left their old ground-floor house to move to an apartment in a new building in the Zhongzheng District, the next one over, east of the Wanhua District. Zhongzheng houses the national government buildings and the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. The Huangs’ building had been banged out during one of the construction booms that come around every few years. It looked impressive from a block away, but a casual observer need only enter the building and walk across the loose porcelain tiles before a number of shortcomings revealed themselves.
The panel to the apartment buzzers was crooked because it was screwed into a frame that was a few millimeters too small. Hammer blows on the protruding edge indicated someone had attempted to cram it in anyway. Luckily visitors didn’t have to worry whether the b
uzzer system was functional or not, because the solid-steel front door was propped open by a plastic bucket with a chipped cinder block in it. The lock was probably out of order, and all the residents probably assumed somebody else had notified the repair service. What did it matter, anyway? Taipei didn’t have many thieves, they reasoned, and surely even those few bad men would be punished by the good brothers during the holiday.
I felt odd about simply walking into the building, so I switched my bag to my left hand and buzzed the Huangs’ apartment. I heard Mrs. Huang say hello, her voice fuzzy and faint, as if transmitted from Pluto.
“Hello, Mrs. Huang, I am sorry to bother you. This is Chen Jing-nan,” I said. The exposed lock made a clicking sound, and I stepped through the open doorway.
In the elevator I had a small anxiety attack and looked into the bag. My pack of joss sticks, some mixed CDs of music Julia liked and a few Snickers bars, her favorite candy. Everything was there.
Whatever I do next, I’m doing only for your parents, Julia. Don’t take it personally. Then again, why am I talking to you?
The elevator opened on the thirteenth floor, and I saw Mrs. Huang was holding the door open. She was dressed in burlap mourning clothes. Her hair was noticeably greyer since I had last seen her, at my parents’ funerals, an event where we’d held hands but said nothing.
It was tough seeing Julia’s mom, because only now did I notice how similar the lower parts of their faces were. Mrs. Huang was looking up to me, fusing her eyes to mine and pursing her lips off-center in the same way Julia used to when she was lost in a thought.
“Jing-nan,” Mrs. Huang said, with a trace of joy around her bleary and baggy eyes. “I knew you would come.”
There was no doubting that Julia was dead now.
“Mrs. Huang,” I said. “I was so sorry to hear. The news just destroyed me.” I embraced her lightly.
Mrs. Huang moved away and blew her nose. I stepped into their apartment and slipped off my shoes. Mr. Huang stood at a slouch in the kitchen, looking lost.
“I told you! Look!” Mrs. Huang said to him. I think he coughed.
I was dimly aware that Mrs. Huang was leading me toward the altar they had set up for Julia on a wall shelf by the dining table. A photograph of Julia looked indifferently over the smoking forest of half-burned incense sticks. I had never seen her face like that before, devoid of emotion except a hint of a smile. How mature you’ve become, I thought. I didn’t recognize the striped top she was wearing, either. This photo must have been taken at college.
I felt a tightness around my left arm. It was Mr. Huang’s hands.
“Jing-nan!” he said. “It’s really you!” Mr. Huang was about as tall as me at five feet eight inches, so among people his age he’s a giant. He was the source of Julia’s thick eyebrows and vaguely sad and beautiful eyes.
“I am so sorry,” I said, briefly embracing him and rubbing his back. “I’ve brought some things.”
“Of course, of course!”
I shook out several joss sticks from my box and lit them in my hands. I formed prayer hands and bowed three times to Julia’s picture.
You would have hated this, darling, but I know you would appreciate me doing this for your parents.
My hands shook as I planted the sticks in the holder and placed the CDs on the altar. I had a hard time reaching up to place the candy bars, because I had fallen to my knees and was sobbing. My whole face was raw, wet and salty, like a just-popped blister.
“No, no, no,” I babbled in English.
The Huangs helped me over to the couch and propped me up on some cushions. Mr. Huang pressed a damp and mildew-scented towel to my forehead. I had to cry it out before my sobs stuttered and slowed.
When I was able to talk again, I said, “Thank you.”
Mrs. Huang handed me a cup of hot barley tea, pumped from a hot dispenser. She sat down to my right and swung her knees away from me.
All three of us were quiet for a few minutes. For the first time, I could pick up the soft sound of the Amituofo chant from an electronic Buddhist chant box plugged in behind the altar.
Mrs. Huang touched my right arm. “The police brought us in to identify Julia’s body,” she said. “Still beautiful. Looked just like she was sleeping. Part of the back of her head was … gone.”
I sucked in my lips and nodded.
“I made sure it was her by feeling the calcium deposit near her right ankle. You know, it’s just like a little knob. Always had to get her low-cut shoes, or else they hurt.”
“She always carried corn cushions,” I said.
“When was the last time you saw Julia?” she asked.
“Right before we left for college.”
Mr. Huang took a seat to my left in an armchair covered in a pill-infested fabric.
“We know you told Julia not to talk to you,” said Mrs. Huang. “She said you didn’t want to get in touch again until you were going to ask her to marry you.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Sounds stupid now.”
“She thought it was so romantic. I did, too.”
Mr. Huang grunted. It wasn’t clear that he meant to indicate approval.
“Everything was doomed by the way you two left Taiwan,” said Mrs. Huang. “You didn’t ask for Buddha’s protection. You didn’t ask Mazu for a safe return to Taiwan. Now look what’s happened. You abandoned them, so they abandoned you and Julia!”
Now was not the time to argue about this. I took a sip of tea.
“This is the wrong way to talk,” said Mr. Huang. “We’re all in shock. We have to appreciate each other.”
“If it would have made a difference, I would have done it,” I said. “Believe me.”
“We’ll never know now,” she said.
Mr. Huang cleared his throat and moved to the candy bars on the ground. “I’ll put these up,” he said.
“Jing-nan,” said Mrs. Huang, “I know you and Julia meant a lot to each other.”
“Yes, we did.” I drank more tea. It had a pleasant, roasted-grain flavor.
“She told me about the times you went to love hotels.”
Barley tea nearly shot out of my nose, but I managed to swallow and say, “She told you?”
“We were very close. We had no secrets, mother and daughter, until a few years ago.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to say anything upsetting. She knew we were sleeping together the entire time! I caressed my puffy eyes and kept quiet.
“I think my relationship with my daughter started going a little wrong around the time your parents passed away, Jing-nan,” Mrs. Huang said. “I asked her if she wanted to come back for the services, but she insisted you wouldn’t want her here. She felt so terrible for you! She was crying like crazy. I told her that under the circumstances, the deal was off. You two had to talk to each other. But she insisted you would see it as a broken promise.”
I nodded.
“That was really something. It was the first time she wouldn’t do something I told her to. My little girl was slipping away. Pretty soon we were talking less on the phone. I could hear it in her voice, no more emotion. Then she told us about the expulsion from NYU, at the end of her junior year. Daddy went crazy.”
Mr. Huang spoke up. “I was very upset,” he said. “I left messages and cursed her. I told her she wasn’t good enough for you.”
“She never called Daddy back,” said Mrs. Huang.
I let a few moments of silence go by before asking a question. “Why was she thrown out of NYU?”
“She cheated,” said Mr. Huang. “She plagiarized from a book for a paper.”
I couldn’t imagine Julia cheating. She wouldn’t look at another student’s paper, not even in cram school, where everybody developed serious cases of giraffe neck. It must have been a huge misunderstanding at NYU. A missed attribution. A footnote gone astray.
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“We didn’t want to believe it, either,” said Mrs. Huang. “But sh
e told us she did. She was taking too many classes and tried to take a shortcut. She only copied a few paragraphs, but it was a serious enough violation.”
“When did she come back to Taiwan?” I asked.
“We don’t know!” said Mrs. Huang.
“I thought she would try to get back in to NYU,” said Mr. Huang.
“You had no idea she was here?”
“We had no idea she was in Hsinchu City!” said Mrs. Huang. “Less than an hour away all these years.”
“Maybe it was my fault,” said Mr. Huang. “I was too harsh. That’s why she didn’t call us again.”
“Who else’s fault could it be?” said Mrs. Huang. “If you really cared about her, you would have told her to just come back to Taiwan and finish her degree here!”
I knew Julia wouldn’t have wanted to do that.
Mrs. Huang launched another attack on her husband. “If you really loved your daughter, you wouldn’t let this go. You would make the police find out who did this! Make the murderer pay!”
Mr. Huang rubbed his hands. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Call them every hour!”
“That’s not going to do anything.”
“See? You still don’t care!”
I spoke up. “Is there anything I could do to help?”
“Jing-nan!” Mrs. Huang looked me over like I was the last chocolate in a box. “Help us! The police don’t care about Julia. They haven’t done anything! Not one person brought in for questioning.”
“You have to give them a few days first,” said Mr. Huang.
“Not even one person! They should bring in everybody who works at that betel-nut stand! The police won’t even tell us which stand it was.”
“They probably don’t want us to interfere with their work.”
“They’re not working!” Mrs. Huang thumped her fist against her breastbone. She sounded empty. “They just want everyone to forget about Julia! The owner of the betel-nut stand must have bribed the police! The news stations don’t even talk about her anymore, just two days later!”