I said good-bye to Yi-sheng on Friday. He’s one of the last remaining Taiwanese ISB grads to return to Taiwan to face the reality of compulsory military service. A couple of them were able to get out of it with bullshit excuses (at least to me, they are). Yu-Yow seems to be the only one man enough to play the cards he was dealt. The rest of us just struggle to stay out of it for as long as we can.
Now that most of us are 30-somethings (or about to be). Joining the military is like a career suicide. For those of us with families, it’s especially tough to spend almost a year and a half slacking off. For my particular situation, the predicament is even worse. Some relatives who championed staying away from the service now think it’s a better idea to just get the service over with and get on with life. But is that really the choice they would have made if they really truly understand our circumstances? Highly unlikely.
It seems like there would be just as many hurdles to cross returning to Taiwan as they are if we stayed. Yi-Sheng’s return somehow puts everything in an even more surrealistic perspective. But then again, for him, it was long overdue. The problems he faced here were significantly more entangled than mine. And I can’t imagine what kind of complicated feelings he must have been going through having decided to go back. How did he feel when he finally purchased that one-way ticket to Chiang Kai-shek International Airport? All the combusting emotions and conflicting yearnings he must have felt boarding that plane… He fought so vigorously for so long to stay. But now everything was just a pipe dream.
If we were to go back, I imagine I’d be one of the most repelled figures among friends there because of my growing sarcasm, inability to bullshit diplomatically, impatience dealing with village idiots and relentless resistance to certain traditions (on the last point, I do it just to piss people off) — survival skills required to stay ahead (or to stay invisible, depending on your objectives in life). I enjoy being accepted as “the angry Asian” too much here. I mean, for someone who spreads rumors about himself (I once started a rumor about how I got my ex-girlfriend pregnant just to see how far it went; it went all the way to my mom [to her distress]), I don’t think I will fit in too well in a society where people like me are frowned upon (fine by me; but it probably brings shame to my parents).
Having Bryan makes us that much more reluctant going back. Maybe it will rain frogs tomorrow and the Catholic Church will declare the end of the World and non-Christians will all rejoice. Or maybe America will declare war on vegetables and being vegetarian would be banned. Whatever happens, I am sticking around at least until my stinking MFA thesis is done. But before that happens, everyday is just another “angry Asian” day. Yay.