1.8 KiB
Home is a Moving Target
Sep 18, 2025
The first thing I notice when I land in Taipei isn’t the humidity, it’s the English. The customs officer glances at my U.S. passport, smiles politely, and greets me with a crisp, "hello". It’s friendly, but it’s also a signal: foreigner.
Back home in the States, the signals run the other way. Strangers will tilt their heads and ask, “Where are you really from?” To them, my black hair and last name are proof that I don’t fully belong.
Two countries, two kinds of distance. In Taiwan, my Mandarin carries a soft American lilt. In America, my face carries a history I can’t shed. The result is a strange elasticity of self: I’m stretched across the Pacific, always a little too much and a little not enough.
And yet, in that stretch, there is unexpected abundance.
I love the late night chaos of a Taiwanese night market, the smoky perfume of oyster omelets, the sugar crust on fried sweet potatoes. I also love the messy creativity of American diners, where pancakes arrive bigger than the plate and coffee refills never stop. My playlists swing from Faye Wong ballads to Kendrick Lamar verses; my shelves hold both pu'er tea leaves and prepackaged mac and cheese. These aren’t contradictions. They’re coordinates.
Belonging, I’ve learned, isn’t a single address. It’s a moving target, a constellation of tastes, sounds, and memories that shift as I do. I may always be a foreigner in Taipei and a hyphenated question mark in California, but I carry the best of both with me, like dual passports of the heart.
Maybe that’s the quiet gift of being Asian American: To stand in the middle of two cultures, to love them both fiercely, and to know that home isn’t where people decide you fit. Home is everything you refuse to give up.