Frank and Peter 2013

老朋友 (“OldFriend”)

One of the aspects of returning to Taiwan that I had been looking forward to is having the opportunity to meet up with my old friendFrank Yao.  It had been many years sincewe had seen each other, in fact at over 23 years it was over half my lifetime ago!  I met Frank in 1989 in the halls of the foreign language university at which I was studying Mandarin.  Frank was gamely asking English-speaking students if they wanted to participate in a language exchange; without much luck since native Chinese speakers in Taiwan were plentiful, while native English speakers were a relatively rare commodity. Most native English speakers tended to charge for their time.  Still, a language exchange sounded like a good idea and Frank seemed like a personable guy. I agreed give it a try along with a Taiwanese Friend of Frank’s and Ian Edgar, my brother-in-law, who was also studying Chinese in Taiwan that summer.  This serendipitous meeting was the catalyst for a rewarding and fun learning experience. 

The four of us spent most of the summer together exploring the island of Taiwan (road tripping) “easy-rider style” with mopeds as our mode of transport instead of Harley Davidsons. It is not an exaggeration to state that I learned, by far, more Chinese that summer than at any other point in my Chinese studies. 

Seeing Frank after more than two decades drove home the passage of time.  In an evening of catching up, I was able to measure in Frank’s life experiences just how much time had passed since we last saw each other. While it is easy to believe that we had not changed much in two decades, the pictures don’t lie.  The topics of our conversations in the present day were also very different than those of twenty years ago.  This time around, our children, wives, and jobs took up much of the conversation, all very foreign topics to 20 year-old easy-riders. 

But not everything has changed, and Frank and I made tentative plans to embark on a road trip. Perhaps this time we will even be able to rent real Harley Davidsons.

1989

2013