kao hsiung reunion
--Grace; Jan 7, 2005

What a busy and emotional day! In the morning, we headed to the local Taipei airport (different than the international one) and took a 45-minute flight down south to a city called Kao Hsiung (pronounced something like “cow shyung”).

	who's your uncle? In the Taiwanese language, there are specific names that represent each member of your parents’ generation, relative to you. So the word for grandmother on your father’s side is different than the word for grandmother on your mother’s side. It can get quite complicated so we won't explain it all, but for example, "Sekim" means "aunt married to your mother's youngest brother" - so Susan's Sekim is her mom's younger brother's wife and I call her Sekim too. So needless to say, it’s taken me a bit of time to get everybody’s name straight and I sometimes have trouble figuring out who we’re talking about.

Sekim (Susan's Aunt – see sidebar) met us at the airport - she is full of contagious energy and it was great to see her again (she spends time in the States, too, so I had met her many times before). Then we stopped at the next terminal to pick up Susan’s sister, Lisan, who is passing through on a business trip.

We dumped our stuff at Sekim’s house, attended a traditional Taiwanese wedding (which includied a 14-course meal), and then headed to Ajik's (Susan's dad's brother) place. He has a large house that is crammed to the gills with family, as is typical with Taiwanese family homes (see second sidebar below). The people that live there are Ajik, his mother (Susan's grandmother), his wife, their two sons, and *their* wives and children. Needless to say, it's a lively place. Everybody was waiting for us to arrive and jumped up when we got there; there was much hugging and laughing and bowing. I only know a few words in Taiwanese, but everybody seemed pleased at what little I could say; I did my best and smiled a lot. I was nervous since I was meeting so many people for the first time, but they all were so amazingly friendly that I felt at home very quickly.

just a normal evening with the household

	all in the family (by Susan) Taiwan has one of the highest ratios of people per square foot in the world, so the cities are crowded. It's a small island and much of it is reserved as National Park. Traditional houses are tall and skinny with many floors- sometimes one floor for the kitchen, one for the living room and then 3 or 4 more floors with just a room and a bathroom on each. This configuration provides a bit of privacy for what is often a crowded, multi-generational household. Although, most of the younger generation isn't putting up with arranged marriages anymore, they are holding on to tradition described above. When a son gets married, his wife is expected to move into the family home and they start a family there. Eventually, they may move out, but traditionally the eldest son stays and cares for his aging parents (nowadays, all siblings help to take care of the parents). This style of living makes for an exciting, fun and often chaotic environment. At my uncle’s house, there can be more than 20 people in the living room on any given night, including some neighbors and various other family relations that don’t live there. We eat, drink tea and laugh the night away.

The one person who didn't jump out of her seat to greet us was, of course, Ama (Susan's grandmother). She is 91 and her days of jumping out of seats are over, but she's still sharp as a tack. So after saying hello to everybody, I knelt down next to Ama and said, "Ni hao, Ama. Wa hwanh hee kwanh dyuh ldee." (This is actually a combo-platter Mandarin and Taiwanese, and means "How are you, grandma? I am happy to meet you.") Ama laughed and patted me on the back and then said a bunch of stuff that I didn't understand, but it didn't matter. Susan summarized it as she was very happy to meet me, she had been waiting a long time and welcome to the family. Then Ama patted Susan on the back and told her she was very happy that she was finally married (compared with Taiwanese tradition, Susan married quite late, even though it was normal for the US). It was a very emotional moment. Susan is extremely fond of her Ama - her grandparents lived with them while they were growing up and were like a second set of parents to her and her sister. Nowadays, she doesn’t get to see Ama very often (and grandpa passed away a few years ago), but she misses them both very much.

So, without boring you with the details, we spent a long time just talking and catching up. When Sekim had fallen asleep from exhaustion, we finally decided that we better head home.

Today was a really great day for us. Susan was really happy to see everybody. And for me, it was great to meet so much wonderful family for the first time. In some ways, it was like getting married all over again to meet Ama and her other relatives and see that they were so excited that Susan and I are happy together.