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Culture shock? ...15 years late

It is the summer of 2007. In the last two years I have found a stable job, but above all I have found a partner who looks to be the right one. These are intense months. I'm entering the fullness of life, a boy begins his transformation into a young man. It is also the year in which for the first time I board an intercontinental flight alone: destination Taiwan.

It's a long flight, with a short stopover in Bangkok. I chat with my seat neighbor for a while, he will stop in Thailand. I proceed with my itinerary. I greet Bangkok and its lights from the window of the aircraft, giving them in my mind an appointment for the near future. But that thought disappears immediately, because Taipei is waiting for me within a few hours. At the airport I find a beautiful girl waiting for me. She is wearing a floral-patterned dress. She greets me, she smiles at me. And the first thing she does is show me that to get out I have to walk to the right, where I can overcome the barriers and finally hug her again. The tired and sleepy version of myself suddenly comes alive: “Hey, Stray, you're in Taipei! Here is the woman you love."

That woman is my wife today. At the same time, however, I start another emotional relationship: the one with Taiwan, where I would then go every year. All of them? Okay, until 2019, of course.

We get in the car, my girlfriend's mother is driving. Communication is very difficult, because my Mandarin is still very limited. My partner's Italian, excellent today, is non-existent. And so we speak in English. So she has to alternate between two languages, to talk to me and to her mother, who doesn't speak English. I would have realized how complicated it is only a year and a half later, when she moved to Italy.

But that Italian boy doesn't speak much on the way home. It is true that he suffers a little from lack of sleep, but it is also true that he is recording everything he sees around him: from the motorway and the vehicles that populate it, to the signs of the shops still largely indecipherable, except those that have Latin characters.

The first stop brings me a very representative gift: Taiwanese bubble milk-tea, a drink made from tea and milk, containing tapioca pearls that you may suck through a rather large straw. I taste it, swallow a couple of tapioca pearls and look around. Then I say to my girlfriend: "I like Taiwan." I don't have the ability to read her thoughts, but I believe she thought, "I'm glad, but isn't it a little too early to tell?"

I often hear many other Westerners talking about culture shock when they first go to the Far East. They don't even need to move for a long time, sometimes a few days are enough to be surprised, sometimes trapped, by cultural differences.

I do not deny that these differences exist, but I think I have always preferred to focus on the similarities first. I'll be succinct: I have not suffered any culture shock. And my initial "I like Taiwan" was nothing more than an optimistic forecast, but thoughtful nonetheless.

And so, even in Taiwan, I can find a bit of Italy. I realize this when I read my Taiwanese friends celebrating the Lunar New Year with meetings, transfers and arrangements that are so reminiscent of Christmas when I was a child. That is when I was still celebrating it, having my grandparents as an anchor point for more distant relatives and acquaintances.

I pick up a bit of Italian when I realize that in Mandarin the age comparisons are made exactly as in Italian, that is, indicating someone as "smaller" (younger) or "bigger" (older). Unlike even many closer European languages.

I find myself having a chat every time I tackle a mountain route. In Mandarin? In English? I don't even notice it anymore. It's all so natural, much like walking into a convenience store and buying a couple of onigiri for a quick lunch. Just like reciting all the stops on the red line of the Taipei subway, which starts in Tamsui and ends in Anagnina. Ah, no, sorry: I mixed it with Line A, equally red, in Rome.

My head is in Taipei, my body is in Rome. Sometimes the opposite happens. I see myself as a citizen of two cities, but within me it is only one. Always in contact with friends and acquaintances in the various corners of the world. I sail inside my own construction until...

Until 2020 arrives.

Translation: closure on both sides. Inability to move, if not after long bureaucratic procedures and swampy precautionary isolations. Okay, this happened almost everywhere. I understand that. In Taiwan, life goes by normally, here and there people walk in two different gears. Of life, but also of information. My Taiwanese friends write to me, they are sincerely worried, but also curious about what the pandemic life actually is like, which they have not known.

Then the vaccines and 2021 arrive. There is a possibility of rebirth and of getting closer. But Taiwan also faces its first pandemic phase in May 2021. "Will it be able to contain it?" I wonder. I root for them.

But that's when something starts to creak, that's where I start to feel distant, lost. The Taiwanese people react compactly: even in the face of limited restrictions, the people erect strong self-regulation. The fear is great, overwhelming, even greater than the one we went through a year earlier in Europe, despite their greater preparation and the availability of additional information. But there is not only this, no. It's obvious. A different reactivity emerges, a different cultural predisposition, a community that I cannot fully understand. In about three months the virus (although in a less contagious variant than those currently dominant) is confined, kept at bay, almost mocked.

Taiwan returns quiet, but sealed. Seemingly euphoric, pleased, but internally shaken and quivering. I realize that a fracture has been created, that there is a psychological distance that will be very difficult to bridge in a short time.

For Taiwan and the Taiwanese, who have chosen the prudent path: it is a blessing, but also a condemnation. The penalty is that of having to continue to postpone a reopening, even if meditated. That of having to play the long wait, without clues and apparent programming.

For me, who after 15 years start to feel like a stranger. That I realize how much my Taiwan and I have flirted in times of prosperity, but how difficult it is to stay connected in times of trouble.

So, my friends T. and G. write to me that they are sick of being confined to that beautiful island for almost two years. They who loved to travel the world, who also came to visit me in Italy, despite the few days of vacation available.

And M., whose job actually consists of traveling? You know, it's hard to be a flight attendant if most flights are canceled. And then you have to look for a part-time to compensate... The lost income, but also that confusing uncertainty that invades everyday life.

They are two simple examples, of an unrepresentative sample of the population. But that's just to say: no, it's not all right in Taiwan. Apart from the professions directly impacted, apart from the businesses that start to trudge due to the almost total absence of international human exchanges.

Aside from all this, everything is not ok. It can't be. It could not be for me, if I found myself living there at this time. Wearing a mask outdoors is not always mandatory in Taiwan, it is only in some cases. However, it is likely that people would give me some dirty looks if I take it off for a few minutes to get a breath of air, obviously outside and at a distance from other people. And I can not consider it ok. As for me, it cannot be ok if I can go everywhere, but if I have to leave a trace of my unequivocal passage at each stop, for the purpose of possible tracking.

If I have to play the game of self-control, I'm pretty good. I always follow all the rules. If I were to break them it would be out of ignorance or distraction. But if you ask me to play the "mutual inspector" game, I'm sorry, but it's not for me. I don't want to be in the role to monitor other people's behavior, nor would I like to feel constantly oppressed by social judgment or the omnipresence of inspections, even if only preventive.

Here I have to capitulate. Here comes my individualism as a Westerner. One who does not want to place himself above the community, but neither wants to be subjugated by it. I consider myself as important as anyone else, no more, no less.

So, I don't want to be in Taiwan, not today. I miss Taiwan, of course, but not the current one.

However, I want to warm my hope a little by looking back on an event a few months ago. I attended a wedding of an Italian-Taiwanese couple. The wedding was in Italy and all the Taiwanese guests, for obvious reasons, came from Europe. Well, I don't know exactly what I expected, but I imagined the Taiwanese would socialize differently from the Italians, that their interactions in the pandemic period would inherit all the caution that is recorded in their place of origin. I was wrong: moderate Asians, in the midst of also moderate Westerners, were almost indistinguishable. And it was a really nice day. Best wishes to the newlyweds!

Maybe we're not all that different. We get used to it, we adapt to everything. To the surrounding environment, to events and to the passing of the days. We act, we react, we give up, we find a balance. We are not from the West, East, North or South. We are all simply human beings. And I can't wait to be all together again.