Trepidation?

After several months of research at the archives of the Presbterian Church in Canada in Toronto, John MacMillan is off to Taiwan to do more research as well as to visit the places he has read about.

People have asked me how I feel heading off to Taiwan to continue my research into the life and work of my missionary grandparents. Their question may signal shared excitement or perhaps it’s a polite way of wondering if I’m off my meds! In truth, both assertions are warranted.

After some two months of trolling archives, scanning photos and poring over maps it’s fun to anticipate visiting ‘the beautiful island’. I have, however, no particular plan and that makes me crazy. I have a hotel booked for the first three nights in Taipei, and am giving a lecture at National Tsing Hua University on April 20 (courtesy of a friend from the Joyce industry). I know I want to visit Tamsui where my father and aunt were born, and where my grandparents arrived in October, 1924. And I want to visit the Taiwanese locales where Canadian POWs (captured in Hong Kong) toiled and died during WWII. But other than that I have no agenda, nor do I know where I will be staying. To cap it off, after practicing choice Mandarin phrases for several weeks, I have discovered recently that speaking Mandarin in Taiwan brands you a ponce, or worse, as a supporter of Chinese unification. “Better to speak Taiwanese,” I am told. But I don’t.

Freedom is sometimes the consciousness of being determined. I know that some of my contacts within the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan have anticipated my arrival and will have meetings and maybe even accommodation planned; the Taiwanese are reputedly very welcoming. As well, the church’s General Assembly is meeting in late April, and I believe I’m expected to attend as a visitor. In other words, like all vacuums, I have no doubt that my relatively blank agenda will be full by the end of my first week in Taipei.

This, then, is a time where faith prevails over doubt; where the memories of things that have not yet occurred fade in the reality of experience. I am excited and nuts to be doing this. But I’m doing it.