Our island, Formosa, bao dao “Precious Island,” is the paradise for fruit. Bananas, pineapples, snow apples, guavas and grapes—endless fields of them in the south. Whenever I go south to see my grandparents, there is a mountain of fruit on the table. One year there were eight typhoons that destroyed most of the crop. Most fruit couldn’t stand floods. That summer I went to the morning market with my Grandma and we haggled with vendors over a box of overpriced, undersized peaches, two papayas, and a bag of tomatoes. “These are too expensive,” I say to my Grandma. The prices were ridiculous even compared to supermarkets in Taipei. “You rarely come back,” my Grandma said, not in a complaining way, but to express that to her, this was a special occasion, and she was willing to pay 100 NT for 20 NT papayas because I, who rarely came back, was back today.
Yu-Han (Eugenia) Chao was born and grew up in Taipei, Taiwan, and received her MFA from Penn State. She edits for the Rose & Thorn and currently lives in northern California. Her poetry book, We Grow Old, was published by Backwaters Press in 2009. Visit her artwork and writing at www.yuhanchao.com