Dai wan wei. The sounds of the Taiwanese Hokkien language don’t resemble Mandarin Chinese, which drifts from the throat in soft wisps. Nor is Taiwanese, as it’s more simply called, like the syncopated rhythms of English, that concoction of multisyllabic consonant-and-vowel blends manipulated by the tongue and lips. Rather, the Taiwanese language originates deep from the belly, creating rumbling sonorous tones that remind me of my dad’s laughter or my mom calling me for dinner, “ki jia buan!”
Although I was born in the States, Taiwanese was the first and only language I heard and spoke until I entered grade school. Delivered through my grandmother’s stern lectures, my dad’s and uncles’ incessant jokes, or my aunts’ pleas to eat, the language molded my early worldview and sense of self.
But during my parents’ youth, Taiwanese was spoken only in whispers or not at all on the streets of their homeland, where locals were forced to adopt Mandarin as their official language in 1945. During the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek and under his Kuomintang party government, my family, among many others, was forbidden to publicly speak their mother tongue, forced to adopt Chinese culture and language, and relegated to an underclass in their own land. It wasn’t until the 1970s, when they moved to Houston, that they began to explore what it meant to be Taiwanese.
