Two Trees Make a Forest by Jessica J. Lee

Author:Jessica J. Lee [Lee, Jessica J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: 2020-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

9

IN TAIPEI, OVER A DINNER OF FRIED NOODLES and braised cabbage, a friend of a friend introduces me to Charlene, a Taiwanese American cinematographer born not far from where my mother grew up. She has a wry sense of humor and the kind of detached attitude I often take for confidence. I learn that Charlene was raised in Taipei in the 1980s, in the decades after my family left. I feel drawn to her as if she holds some knowledge my family lacks. A part of me, too, envies Charlene those years here. I recognize in her the transience that has marked so much of my own life, navigating between worlds, in her case between LA and Taipei. Like me, she carries the traces of body and language that come from a life overseas, the markers of movement: in posture, in small gestures, in the volume of our voices. We who make our homes elsewhere give ourselves away in the little things we can’t quite control.

Charlene tells me that though she often spends time hiking in California, she rarely ventures out in Taiwan. Some days later, on a dry morning, we meet for a journey east. We are intent on visiting Keelung Mountain, a grass-covered peak overlooking the northeastern coast, but by the time we dismount the coach at Jioufen, the sky is a heavy slate and fat drops of rain begin to fall. Tourists unfurl their umbrellas, winding their way through the awnings and up the narrow staircases of the village toward the food stalls, brightly lit in their rain ponchos. We stride onward, past the lanes, tying our hoods around our faces, our skin softening with the wash of water. At the base of the mountain, we check our laces and begin our route up the irregular stone steps, watching the rain pour down the hillside toward the harbor and the sea.

From the midpoint of the mountain, I can just about see Jioufen, the village on the hills, and Keelung’s curving coastline, distant in a veil of rain. Pale lights twinkle in the gray, and fog blots out the borderland of the shore.

Between her curses about the incline of the steps, Charlene begins to distract me with tales of the food we can eat after our hike: feather-light taro balls and hot ginger soup, ice cream wrapped with peanut and coriander. Jioufen has become popular with tourists because of its lantern-lined alleyways, said to have inspired the Hayao Miyazaki film Spirited Away. In that story, when a girl loses her family she becomes a ghost herself.

The final flight of steps takes us through a mist so thick we cannot see each other. We walk directly into the rain cloud and emerge to white fog on the peak. Below us, a bed of clouds blocks the view of the sea below. The northeast is the monsoon corridor; the winter storm makes its way across the island from the East China Sea. Cold to the bone, we stand for a while, unseeing, cradled by cloud.

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