Zana’s Reviews > Taipei Story > Status Update

‘I explained: When the Communists took over, China didn’t have enough food to go around, so they put a limit on how many children people could have, and no one wanted girls, so people were aborting or abandoning baby girls until they gave birth to boys. “Wow,” said Erin. “So your parents would have left you in a field.” I said that I thought my parents were more progressive than that, but yes—perhaps so.’

I snorted

Omg Lily STFU (me saying this even though I was the same annoying brat at her age)

“Once, when I was in ninth grade, my mother had told me that it was lucky I was so good at school, because if they didn’t have me, if they just had Jasmine, then my father would have killed himself a long time ago. Keep it up, she said. So that was the kind of relationship we had.”

Jesus

“The last time they had spoken to us, meaningfully spoken to us, we had been children. Now we were verbally arrested, even worse at Chinese than we had been at three, four, and five, and unable to do anything but echo those childish refrains. Gonggong, Popo, hello! It’s me! I’m good. I’m very good. I’m studying hard. Yes, I’ve eaten. Wishing you good health. Here’s Mom, now. Bye-bye.”

At least this part's relatable

‘“You’ve got a kid from Hong Kong, a kid from Singapore, a kid from Beijing, and a kid from Taiwan. So you had Communists and Nationalists and peasants and landlords. Your grandparents would have killed each other, you know? But here you are, acting like the mere fact of your Chineseness is some centrifugal force. Isn’t that bizarre?”’

Damn called out by a white boy

“...I had worked his penis for at least twenty minutes; did that not count for something? Anyhow, I had more right to be angry. He had been a most ungenerous lover. He hadn’t even gestured toward my clitoris. But I was just glad to be on my way home.”

Girl

“My freshman year had been very instructive. I knew how to handle a penis.

Thoughts of milking a cow rose unbidden to my mind, but once the image was there I couldn’t get rid of it. Yes, this was what I would have to do—milk him dry, and then I could go to sleep.”

I can't deal with this lol

‘JC kicked at the gate. “Why on a Friday?”

His vehemence startled me; I shrank back. “It’s okay.”

“But people come out on Fridays!” His cheeks were flushed red, and his voice carried a sudden, childish hitch. For a moment, I thought he might cry. “Why would you close it today, of all the fucking days?”’

Girl dump him 🤮🤮

“It occurred to me that perhaps JC didn’t want Anna to come—that perhaps her absence was the point. But did I want to go if Anna had been excluded on purpose? And if JC didn’t want Anna there, then why did he want me?”

Goddamn I'm really too old for this shit

“The most daring thing I had done last semester was stay out late after a Broadway show with a group of girls from my floor, and though we were safely home by two in the morning, I felt a sick dread the entire time. I wasn’t afraid I would get in trouble—how would my parents find out?—but I felt a moral horror, like I was losing my discipline and virtue and being corrupted to the ways of sloth.”

I'm too old for this