Landing in Taoyuan Airport, around 5 a.m.

The plane is beginning to descend on the island.

It is still too early – the city lights are just starting to come on amidst a dull bluish-gray fog. I take out my camera in the hopes of getting some first shots of my birth country, to capture this moment – but I cannot get a good view: I am in a middle row, and the window closest to me is on the right, but the passenger has closed it. So I contend with the view on my left, which happens to be nearly two rows away, and I only see bits and pieces of my homeland.

Somehow the shock seems so surreal. Is that really my birth country? Am I really “back”?

My vision blurs and a tear rolls down my cheek. I wipe it away quickly.

I wonder if my brother is awake, I wonder if he has eaten and is on his way, how will I recognize him in person, how will I communicate with him? My acquaintance passenger who – in her visit to see her relatives – has graciously agreed to “guide” me through my first overseas flight and help with the introductions, but she will not be by my side much longer. My brother knows my arrival time and is picking me up but will he be there in time and what if he isn’t? Then what?

My thoughts keep running around in crazed patterns, each more panicked than the last as the plane dips downwards into the airport. My nerves are on such high end that I visit the bathroom multiple times in an attempt to relieve my anxiety, but it doesn’t work.

Oh god, oh god, we are landing in a place where no one speaks English, where I’m meeting people I haven’t seen since my birth.

~

We retrieve our luggage. I go through customs and pray the man checking for citizenship does not ask me any questions in Mandarin. The signs by customs and luggage chutes are bilingual, but as soon as we reach the main area, most only continue in Chinese. I cannot read them and my temporary state of calm starts to dissipate. We reach a payphone and I tell my acquaintance, Yuan-Feng, to please dial my brother’s number so we can ensure he is actually at the airport.

She takes out her international phone card and then glances up, looking over at someone past me. “Is that your family there?”

I turn around.

My father and sister are standing there a few feet away, looking at me. So this is Xiao-Ping, my sister. No words are necessary to confirm that they are indeed biologically related to me. We mirror each other’s facial features. She is nearly identical in height to me. I stand there, staring at them; I am well aware that neither of them will understand any English I could say, and they have been made aware of the fact that I do not really speak much Mandarin. But there are still no words to describe the surrealism of that moment – when I met my father and sister for the first time in person.

My sister stands there, clutching her cell phone in an awkward manner. Our gazes meet, and then my father smiles a bit and asks me something. Instinctively, I turn to Yuan-Feng, and she responds accordingly. I watch, baffled, as she continues the exchange with him and gestures to an exit inside the airport.

We head outside of the airport to where a van is waiting. I can immediately tell from the facial features that he is elder Brother. He wears glasses! That is surprising since none of his pictures have ever shown any indication of weak eyesight; I suppose those glasses are just required for driving. He says something to my father and they organize the suitcases into the back of the van. I look to Xiao-Ping and she points to the backseat of the vehicle. Yuan-Feng relays that my brother will be giving her a ride as well.

The van is quiet with the radio turned down low. The music emits a blur of Mandarin news and pop songs. Xiao-Ping is sitting next to elder Brother in front. I sit in back with my backpack on my knees, Yuan-Feng on my right, and my father next to her. It is so odd to be seated in a car with people I am genetically related to, yet who are by many accounts mere strangers.

My father says some things in Mandarin, but I am helpless to respond, and so Yuan-Feng does that for me. After each exchange, I ask her for a brief summary. Of course, she has been living in Canada for a while now too, so she can answer his questions without needing to clarify with me. Silence descends upon the van. I take out my phrasebook and flip through it for a moment.

Phrasebooks are pretty useful for travel dialogue. Unfortunately, they aren’t exactly loaded with dialogues meant for an adult adoptee who has returned to her birth country. I throw it back into my backpack and watch the rainy weather as we pass out of the airport highway.

Yuan-Feng nudges me. “You should speak Mandarin,” she tells me.

I glance at my father, who is watching my siblings. Then I look back at her. “I can’t! They won’t understand my accent!”

“But you should try. You’re going to be staying with them, aren’t you?”

She has made a point. My gaze lingers back to my father. Er, what do I call him by? I look helplessly at Yuan-Feng, who seems to take the hint, and uncomfortably nudges him. “Xian sheng?” she says, in the polite way to greet an elder male who is not of familial relation.

“En?” he says. She motions to me and his gaze meets mine. I take a deep breath and try to ask my first question.

“Mingtian ni shang ban ma?” Do you have work tomorrow?

He looks baffled at my accent, and then proceeds to ramble on. Yuan-Feng re-translates my question in the proper tonal inflection and is also quick to relay that they were able to take the day off to meet me but that tomorrow and on weekdays I will be by myself.

Much of the ride back is spent in silence.

*

After about 45 minutes in awkward silence and the occasional exchange, Yuan-Feng is dropped off at her relatives’ place. I really am all on my own now.

Fear threatens to overwhelm me and my vision blurs again, indicating that emotionally I am at my breaking point. Intellectually I know I am safe, I know I am with people who will take care of me, but being surrounded by shop signs that I cannot read, a dialect that I do not decipher and pronunciations that my mouth will not enunciate is not an encouraging feeling.

I sort of want to just somehow ask them to drive back to the airport so I can go back home.

Of course, that’s not really an option.

After watching my siblings tease each other in the front seat for a few minutes, I take another deep breath and try to ask another question, speaking slowly and as clearly as possible. “Women hen kuai hui jia ma?” Will we be returning home soon?

My father glances at me. I wonder what he is thinking of me so far, what he thinks of my pitiful Mandarin and my overall receptiveness while in their midst. I wonder what he thinks of me – his daughter from over twenty years ago. “Hen kuai, dui.” Soon, yes.

*

I soon discovered that once we were in their residence that communication was not as difficult in context, aided by body language. My first few days were an incredible strain because I had not expected the local dialects to be spoken so quickly. I had taken classes and done some language exchanges, so I knew Mandarin would be spoken at a much faster pace than what my previous experiences indicated, but it was still a shock and complete readjustment when the reality surrounded me.

My phrasebooks did not help. My dictionary – and recalling the grammar syntax I had absorbed from my textbooks – saved my life, allowing me to communicate basic needs. For example, when Xiao-Ping led me to the bathroom, she pointed to the towel, said “maojin” and imitated scrubbing her hair. I connected the sound to the object and repeated her actions to indicate I had understood.

I would also point to an object such as a shampoo bottle, motion to the shower head, and say “xi toufa” while doing the charade of lathering my hair to confirm that I could use that shampoo for washing my hair. Xiao-Ping would also point to the shower dial and say the words “leng“ while turning it to the left, and then “re” while turning it to the right, indicating that the left was to make cold water come out, and turning it right meant that hot water would come.

In some ways, the language barrier gave some fairly comedic moments, as my siblings had to act out things. In other ways, it remained a nuisance more than anything, particularly when I could not clarify about family photos very well because of my accent. Sometimes I could ask simple questions and use body language to compensate for when my accent made my Mandarin incomprehensible, but that didn’t always mean I could understand the responses.

Perhaps what remains the biggest obstacle pertaining to this barrier is the heartache at not being able connect emotionally – not having the memories of this family, being locked out linguistically, and feeling as though any chance at rebuilding a relationship is based on my Mandarin survival skills.

But if given the chance to do it again, to step back onto the plane and return, to go through that moment of terror where I truly did not think things would be “okay”, to navigate my way as a long-lost family member, would I do it?

Absolutely.