The Accidental Foreigner
By: Julia C. Tsai
Tags: Covid Diaries, Covid-19, Taiwan

The Accidental Foreigner

Let me take a moment to gush about how awesome it is living in Taiwan: food is good and plentiful here, people are friendly and polite, the internet isn’t blocked, and most importantly, COVID hasn’t taken over the country like it has others.

I can’t imagine still living in Los Angeles while COVID rages on almost a year after. What would it be like being absolutely alone for those nine months in my downtown apartment? What would I have felt watching and hearing the protests after George Floyd’s death roll through my neighborhood? And I probably would have contracted COVID by now according to this news report?

6,000 miles away, I feel like I live in Shangri-la having meals in restaurants, working out of cafes, gathering at friends’ apartments for dinner parties and poker games, and shopping for groceries at my leisure. The only caveats are that I’m required to wear a mask on public transportation and certain public venues, have my temperature checked at any time, and be sprayed with alcohol hand wash at any time. All of that is slowly starting to crumble as reports of locally transmitted cases begin to crop up, first by the horny New Zealand pilot and now by frontline healthcare workers.

To the Taiwanese people’s immense credit, no one panicked after the New Zealand pilot incident. Responsible parties came forward to help with contact tracing and undergo testing, and the case was dealt with efficiently. Now, with these new cases involving frontline healthcare workers, real concern is starting to ripple through the island, so much so that various cities have canceled their Lantern Festivals, celebrations that mark the end of the Lunar New Year festivities, which would take place on February 26, 2021, more than a month from now.

Admittedly, compared to other countries, Taiwanese anxiety over ten cases connected to frontline healthcare workers seems a bit of an overreaction. Yet, for a country that had a streak of 253 days of no locally transmitted cases in 2020, ten is a scary number, enough for me to bring back memories of how I lived during California’s first shelter-in-place. I’m already thinking of stockpiling coffee, alcohol, and grocery staples, I’m preparing to work from home for a while, and I’m looking forward to making significant progress in my video games backlog until all contract tracing and testing has been done. I see my staying at home as doing my part for the greater good, and honestly, I’m a homebody at heart.

Make no mistake — I didn’t find sheltering in place fun the first time around. Here’s what my Kubler-Ross stages of grief looked like in March 2020:

Denial — Omg, this is stupid. I’m so over the United States. I was right in wanting to leave. I’m still leaving, right?

Anger — I want to smash everything in this stupid house!!! Oh shit, I broke the coffee bean grinder. How am I supposed to have my coffee?!

Bargaining — Okay, if almost everyone in Los Angeles just stays put this week, we can all be out of this by end of April. Or May.

Depression — Maybe this Betty Crocker just-add-water muffin mix will cheer me up.

Bonus Anger Stage — Video call meetings really magnify how much I hate meetings.

Bonus Depression Stage — How come I’ve never truly appreciated an Oreo before?

Acceptance — Oooh, there’s something called Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition on the Apple App Store…

I think I’ll fare better this time around now that I’ve experienced shelter-in-place before, know my breaking points, and live alone (I sheltered-in-place with my elderly Taiwanese parents in LA). I also still have the freedom to go outside and run errands, go grocery shopping, and get my sweet treat fix since the situation hasn’t reached a critical point (at least at the time of writing this piece). I’m fairly confident the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control will have these cases under control and life will go back to Shangri-la normal soon. In the meantime, I’m firing up my PlayStation 4, and might I suggest you find a game to play, too?