Who, in their postmenopausal right mind, would choose to serve once more in a role they had held fresh out of college? Especially when the position is located on the other side of the planet? Not to mention it would require being away for six months from one’s young adult children, spouse, dog, and old hen named Matilda?

I wrestled with these questions for nearly two years, talked them through with my family, and waited—then waited some more, as pandemic-induced border controls and travel restrictions evolved. In December 2022, the stars aligned for me to reserve a round-trip ticket to Taiwan—my birthplace, home until age 10, and intermittent base throughout my 20s and 30s.

A part of me longed to return to check in with the place, see the people, feel the pulse. I also had a broader mission: reaffirming a longstanding institutional partnership as the world was emerging from COVID-19 lockdown protocols. After the Year of the Hare began, I embarked on a sabbatical of sorts, as the Elisabeth Luce Moore ’24 Wellesley-Yenching Senior Fellow at the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

“Which way do you want to go?” the taxi driver asked when I gave him my relative’s address a few hours after landing. “I haven’t driven in downtown Taipei for a long time,” he explained, gesturing at his suburban permit.

“Neither have I,” I said. I had last been there in 2017 to visit Laolao, my grandmother who had since passed.

Over the decades, taxi rides have provided opportunities to catch up on local politics, as many drivers freely offered their impassioned analyses. This one, however, inquired about my travels; we discovered as we chatted that his younger brother not only works in the town where I live in western Massachusetts, but also knows one of my friends in the area.

This encounter was the first of several seemingly random connections made throughout my stay in Taiwan. A few have evolved into collaborative relationships, even friendships, proving to me time and again the truth of the adage: “Those destined to meet travel great distances to do so.”

I rented a studio in a neighborhood comprising houses built—coincidentally—the year I was born. The septuagenarian owner had settled his family there when his daughters reached school age. Shilin Elementary School, founded in 1895, the same year Taiwan was ceded to Japan, was a five-minute walk away; Shilin Junior High School, established in 1945, when Taiwan became part of the Republic of China, was a two-minute walk in the other direction. To some, the area may feel old and worn, but the vibe resonated with me. I welcomed the sounds of school bells ringing, whistles blowing, basketballs bouncing. As a bonus, the scent of sweet osmanthus greeted me as I turned the corner, bringing me back to a place embedded in my memory, where I could breathe more freely and naturally. Was that my childhood, or an imagined space?

Nearby, at Huarong Market, seasonal produce beckoned me, driving home the reality of choices and tradeoffs: I could be here feasting on fresh bamboo shoots and honey jujubes, or I could be collecting eggs and picking blueberries in my backyard in Massachusetts. How do I find ways to balance the attention and time I want to devote to my various communities and the locale-specific realms of my being?

Related to this conundrum is an existential question that crystallized as I read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, an ecologist, author, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. How might I, as a self identifying serial migrant, become “indigenous to place”? Kimmerer’s work was one of the three books I packed for this homeward journey, and I was profoundly struck by her observation: “The Mother of the People was first an immigrant.” In the same chapter, Kimmerer refers to time as a circle and compares it to “the sea itself,” rather than a line flowing in one direction. “All things that were will come again,” she writes.

Such imagery made me think of jianghu—literally “river/s” and “lake/s”—which can be understood as the proverbial “waters in which we swim.” (Allow me to sidestep the term’s conventional association with martial arts sagas in Sinophone storytelling traditions.) Jianghu can suggest both a story’s setting and its narrative lens: not only where the story occurs, but also how it is told. It also allows for the presence of alternative—sometimes intersecting—realities that occupy diverse dimensions of existence and realms of imagination.

In retracing my past, I was exploring possible directions for the present as well as the future, whether by land or via waterways. Likely, both.

“How did you find these vantage points?” I asked Iban Ziro, an Atayal photographer and artisan, as he installed his exhibition at Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines. Tribal elders had shown him which mountains to ascend—and when—in order to see panoramic views of their settlements under favorable lighting conditions. Iman described riding around for hours and not finding the right spot, eventually giving up and heading back when, suddenly, he would witness breathtaking scenery bathed in golden sunlight or dramatic mists. “I began to approach each journey with the mindset that I am on my way home,” he told me, “and the thought lifts my spirits.”

In that moment, I realized my own quest had come full circle: All along, I, too, was continually making my way home.