My grandparents left China for Taiwan in the late 1950s, in order to follow the Nationalist government and flee Communist rule. My mom and her three siblings were raised in Taiwan, living and identifying neither as Taiwanese nor Chinese, but something in between. My grandmother was the first in our family to leave Taiwan for the United States, and my mother eventually left as well. I am the only one in our family to have been born and raised in the United States, although most of our family has come to settle here in the years after my birth.
My family’s story has been one of turmoil for two generations. To which country do we belong? China, where my grandparent’s grandparent’s grandparents and the generations before them lived and died? Taiwan, a country that my mother’s generation has retained ties to, but which most of them have left? The United States, a country with a cultural and a language that is both foreign and familiar for so many of my family members? All of the above? Or, only partly to each of those countries, and thus, really, to none of them at all?