Li-chün
She was in a wheelchair, and I asked her to marry me—we should probably start there. Her name was Li-chün, which I know is a mouthful for English readers, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. The best I can give you as a working pronunciation is “Lee Jwin”, that second syllable rhyming with “twin”. It’s not right, but it’s not far off.
When I first met her, I didn’t know that I had, because she was in a group of people. They all looked to be about my age. They were outside, sitting around a long table in the shade of a tall, dense tree. Several were in wheelchairs. I was jogging around the perimeter of a large grass lawn not far from that tree, as I had done several days in a row before. On this particular day, they waved me over.
The men who could, stood, leg braces and all, reaching for their cigarettes as they did. Each reached out to offer me one. As I accepted from one guy, another already had his lighter ready for me. I know that smoking a cigarette in the middle of a run sounds ridiculous, but it would have been wrong to refuse the ice breaker. Even I knew that.
I'm sure the main attraction for them was the opportunity to converse with a native English speaker, having been forced to study the language all those years, but they were clearly interested in me as well. They would later remember all I said that first day. American. College student. Just this year. One brother, three sisters. Connecticut. Near New York. (Oh, New York!) Italian and Polish. Trying to learn Mandarin.
Like most other young Chinese I met, they were both surprised and proud that I was learning their language. Surprised, they said, because it was so impractical. I didn’t ask about their situation; they told me. They were all living in “the facility” behind them. They turned and pointed. Some were here temporarily, others permanently. But they were all good friends. They didn’t need to say that they all had serious problems with their legs.
We chit-chatted a while as my cigarette drew down, and then the same cohort offered another. I refused with thanks, and said I needed to finish my run, which probably sounds inappropriate, but it really wasn’t. They understood. I could see it in their faces. As I started to jog away, one of the women called out, in Mandarin, “You should exercise earlier, it’s too hot this time of day.” I don’t know if it was Li-chün who said it, but I wish I did.
I took that advice the following week, getting up with the sun one day, and heading over to the lawn, one of the only green spaces I could find in my neighborhood. It hadn’t occurred to me—or I hadn’t let it occur to me—that it was private property, and always empty because of it. To my surprise, there was someone sitting by the table that early in the morning. It was Li-chün, and she was reading a book. I stopped by to say hello, and in doing so, startled her a bit. But she smiled and put the book down. I asked what she was reading and she told me. Her English was good.
She didn’t strike me as pretty that first morning, but that would change later in the summer. She said it was “admirable” that I was learning Mandarin, because I didn’t have to learn it, and so few people did. I was afraid to ask her anything about herself. I didn’t trust myself not to trip over the wheelchair. So I let her ask some more about me, and we had a short and pleasant conversation. I did ask her name, and remembered it.
The next day was much like the one before. She wasn't looking for me, but smiled when I approached and we talked a short while.
But on the third day, she was clearly expecting me because she had something with her, which she started unpacking as I sat down. She asked me, in Mandarin, “Do you know how to play Chinese chess?” When I said I didn’t, she asked, “Do you want to learn how?” Again in Mandarin. In fact, she didn’t speak a word of English the entire day. Whenever I didn’t understand, she would rephrase it, and rephrase it again. As a last resort, she would point to the Chinese-American dictionary that she had also brought. She’d wait patiently while I fumbled with it, but once I got the meaning, she’d pick up the conversation where it had left off, with this new and critical word now in the mix.
Every day went like this. She simply wouldn’t speak English. She didn’t care what language I used, and I used English when I was stuck, but she always spoke Mandarin. After a while, after I knew the rules and was fluent with the names of the pieces and the names of the moves, she switched to mahjong, and we did the same with that game. She taught me to snap the pieces down on the table to show confidence and style, which, she added, was not always required, but could be useful. Before the end of the summer she brought in a third game: Go.
Given that I spent a whole year in Taiwan, I should have learned a lot more Mandarin than I did. But the foreign experience itself was overwhelming, and I was spending a lot of time with Americans. However, my language skills did get very solid with respect to Chinese games. I could converse passably with real confidence in this one non-trivial topic. This was Li-chün’s gift to me. I would never have followed through and really learned Mandarin without it. She walked me to the second-language learner’s first real vista, which most people never reach. They never get to see how wonderful the view is from inside a real conversation.
Later on in life, while on business trips to various American cities, I would seek out the parks where the Chinese old men hung out, and watch them play. I could hear the distant echo of Li-chün’s voice coming from their mouths if I could find a game in Mandarin. I never let on that I understood any of what they said, or even knew how to play the game. I just watched and listened.
Most mornings that summer, Li-chün and I played one of the board games for at least an hour. Sometimes others would join us, but they all realized quickly—from the stern looks Li-chün shot them—that it was a Mandarin-only zone.
Li-chün was happy, funny, kind, patient and demanding. But also so much more than that list of glowing words can convey. She was intimately kind, like a very close friend who genuinely liked me as I was, but who also wasn’t going to let me get away with not working diligently towards my professed goal.
When she looked me full in the face, I always got the feeling that she was looking through me. Despite all the glorious attention I was getting from her, it felt as if there was something else taking the first drink at that well. If I had to guess I would say that she was busy channeling something. It had the effect of making her what I can only describe as being “centered”. At the table, my mind would frequently be off somewhere, lost in thought, maybe on the move in the game, maybe on something else. But whenever I returned and looked over at her, there she was, waiting for me, channeling away. It wasn’t some freaky trance, if that’s what it sounds like. It was calm, kind, and deep. It was luxurious for me inside that gaze.
I spent a whole summer with Li-chün, and really remember only a handful of specific incidents. It’s funny and sad how it works that way.
One day early on, as I arrived at the table I noticed there wasn’t a board game on it. “Let’s go get some breakfast,” she said, in English, and she spoke only English to me that day. This pattern, too, repeated. Once a week, we'd leave the grounds and venture out into the city streets to find something to eat in English.
We were waiting at a crosswalk on one of these English-only days, and Li-chün’s attention turned to a painfully thin feral dog on the sidewalk a few meters away. It was engaged in battle with a plastic food container it could not manage to get inside of. “Go open it for him,” she said. I hesitated. I guess I hadn’t come to terms with the feral dogs in Taiwan. I was more afraid and disgusted than I was empathetic. Li-chün looked back and up at me with the meanest look ever. In any language it said, “What is wrong with you???” I started walking towards the dog, and we missed the light.
The dog backed off a bit, skittish but determined. The container was harder to open than I thought it would be, especially with dog slobber all over it, but eventually I solved it. I left it there, open on the ground, and backed away.
I was expecting nothing short of a hero's welcome on my way back to the chair, but Li-chün’s eyes never met mine. She was focused in on the dog, watching it eat, with no detectable emotion on her face. Just taking it in. We crossed when the light changed again.
On another day, we were eating breakfast in a restaurant and some Chinese guy pulled up a chair right next to Li-chün. He tossed a cursory smile in my direction as he did, and then the two of them launched into a very long discussion in high-speed Mandarin, virtually none of which I understood. They didn’t even try to include me, and I felt more and more inconsequential as the minutes ticked by.
He was clearly a little too captivated with Li-chün, and it struck me as kind of pathetic. Until it dawned on me that that’s exactly what I must look like talking to her. I’m sure I was embarrassed and deflated, but I could barely taste those emotions, I was so overcome with jealousy. She talked to him just like she talked to me. The same happiness, the same full attention. Or was it more happiness and more attention? That’s the question I couldn’t get out of my head. I had never known jealousy before and had completely dismissed it as a non-player among the family of emotions. How wrong I was. It was two “sick” days away from the table before I got myself back.
The third memory is the day her wheelchair broke in town. One of the wheels started sticking, then it jammed and something snapped. There was no fixing it, so we flagged down a taxi to take us back. I was absent-mindedly watching the driver shift things around in the trunk to make room for the chair when Li-chün waved me over to the side of the car. She had opened the front door on the passenger side. When I got to the chair she reached both arms up towards my neck. I bent down, put my left arm in the small of her back, and ran my right arm lightly down to her knees, keeping her dress in place the whole way. I placed her gently into the car. After we got the wheelchair tied down in the trunk, I climbed into the back seat on the driver’s side.
About one minute into the ride, Li-chün turned around and, without embarrassment or concern, looked me up and down. Then her eyebrows shot up and she broke into a big smile that she clearly wanted to share with me. Back at the facility, she had me fetch help. They brought out another chair and placed her in it. It didn’t occur to me to offer to pay to fix the chair. I just wasn’t operating on that level.
One day at the table, I was thinking over a chess move, and I just blurted it out: “Would you marry me?” Believe me, I know just how bad that sounds. It's will you marry me, not would. I was just that dumb and insensitive. I honestly wanted to have a discussion about whether it was even a possibility. What can I say?
This linguistic nuance was lost on Li-chün of course, and she immediately dropped her eyes and said, “No.” I had never seen her sad before. But lucky for me, the same stupidity that got me into the mess got me out. I wasn’t insulted or surprised at all by her answer. I came back with just the right words delivered with just the right amount of sincerity. “But we can still be friends forever, right?” She perked right up and things were back to normal, just like that.
And that was my summer in Taiwan with Li-chün at the tail end of my year studying abroad. The gang planned a going-away party for the day before my flight back to the States. When I arrived at the table there was someone sitting next to Li-chün who I hadn't seen before. As I sat down, she introduced him as her husband. He stood. I stood. I stuck out my hand, forgetting that shaking hands wasn’t common in Taiwan, but he obliged. He was kind, and funny, and smart, and wonderful. Of course he was.
Somehow I made it through that afternoon. I have dim memories of sunflower seeds and singing, but not much more. As I was saying my final good-byes, Li-chün pulled out a small gift and handed it to me. I knew I was expected to open it right then in front of everyone, but I couldn't. I just couldn't. I just thanked her, and did my very best to smile gratefully for all she’d done for me. It was a little awkward, but still a pretty good final moment for me to look back on, all in all.
Back at my apartment, the packing went quickly, but when it was done, the gift lay there alone on my desk. I couldn’t bring myself to open it. I didn’t want to face what I knew was inside: a memento of my time in Taiwan, not of my time with her.
I couldn’t leave it in my room because my landlady would send it to me in the States, and I didn’t want this thing chasing me around the world. I also couldn't throw it away.
So I snagged a taxi 15 minutes early the next day, and had the driver stop by the table. As I approached, I noticed Li-chün was not among the group there. I placed the unopened gift on the table, and asked them to give it to Li-chün. They knew what it was. They knew what it meant. But they smiled anyway, and promised to get it to her. How I hope they broke that promise.
Even with the taxi waiting, I tried to draw out this final final-good-bye, hoping beyond hope that Li-chün would appear from the facility, calling out for me to take her with me to America. But of course, she didn’t. I felt the faces before me already fading from memory. Li-chün’s light had shone too brightly.
I don’t believe I had another thought the rest of that day. I made my way back to the taxi, and was driven zombie-like through the city, and then out to the airport, where I found myself on an airplane, looking down, first at the tarmac, then at rice paddies, then at endless expanses of ocean, expecting to find nothing, and finding nothing, until the sky went dark.