如何當某一種台灣人
盡快拿到獎學金，離開台灣，去北美：溫哥華、紐約、洛杉磯、多倫多……或者，管他的，就算是俄亥俄州的哥倫布也行。朝博士、法學博士或醫學博士衝刺，任何一種學術上的「全場最佳」都好。即使你逃離出生地的原因之一，正是父母那條窄得可憐的認可跑道，你還是忍不住去追逐那個你被訓練去追逐的獎賞。
主要跟白人交朋友。嫁給一個有公民身分的。在這個反移民的年代，高學歷已經不再保證居留權。在一份有股票選擇權、還有一條「失敗也能往上爬」的路的工作裡安頓下來，就算它不能讓你滿足，因為誰知道什麼才能讓你滿足呢？
打電話給父母的次數，只要多到能讓親戚閉嘴、不再罵你不孝就好。耐心聽父親一遍又一遍講他的奮鬥史。你可以在心裡（只是別說出口）驚嘆他碰過的東西怎麼都會變成金子——電子雞工廠、葡式蛋塔店、摺紙野餐椅、方形西瓜——然後在每一陣生意熱潮像颱風一樣不可避免地掃過這座島之後，又全變成垃圾。練好那聲不置可否的嗯哼，用來安撫你的母親；從排便、職涯迷途，到你沒有孩子（她認定是不孕），她都會主動奉上偏方。別告訴她你在心理治療裡正學著說出口的事——你會在習慣了每天早上把憂鬱的自己拖下床很多年以後才開始去看治療師，而且是在「有治療師」已經成了一枚展示脆弱的榮譽勳章之後。但別跟你母親說。試試看告訴她你不想要孩子，是因為你感受不到父母與孩子之間那種簡單、無條件的愛，她就會開始防衛，然後在你們每週、後來每月、再後來每年一次的通話裡，揚言要為了她對你犯下的種種錯而自殺。
除了那些通話，只說英文，直到你連做夢都用英文。至少要十年，你才不必在派對上對笑話假笑。
聖誕節時，姻親的姻親問你上次回泰國是什麼時候，別評斷人家。反正你也不會拼 Mississipi(?)，也找不到紐芬蘭在哪裡。
如果有人問台灣和中國到底是怎麼回事——而總是會有人問——就來一段這樣的獨白（在你喝下足夠的蛋酒之後）……
（未完……收錄於即將出版的短篇小說集《每個故事都有人死去》）
（中文譯自英文原文）
English original
As soon as possible, get out of Taiwan with a scholarship to North America: Vancouver, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto… or, heck, even Columbus, Ohio, would do. Race toward a Ph.D., J.D., or M.D., an academic best-in-show of any kind. Even though one reason for your flight from your birthplace is the narrow runway of your parents’ acceptance, you can’t help chasing after the prize you are conditioned to chase.
Befriend mainly white people. Marry one with citizenship. An advanced degree no longer guarantees residency in this anti-immigration time. Settle down in a job with stock options and a path to fail upward, even if it doesn’t fulfill you, because who knows what does?
Call your parents only as often as necessary to silence your relatives’ condemnations that you are an unfilial child. Be patient while you listen to your father’s perennial account of his striving. You can marvel at (just not out loud) how everything he touches turns to gold—a Tamagotchi factory, a Portuguese egg tart bakery, origami picnic chairs, watermelons shaped like cubes—before it turns to rubbish when a business craze inevitably passes over the island like a typhoon. Master that non-committal grunt to placate your mother, who offers unsolicited remedies for anything from bowel movement to career meandering to your childlessness that she assumes to be infertility. Don’t tell her what you are learning to articulate in therapy, which you will start years after getting used to dragging your depressed self out of bed each morning and only after having a therapist has become an honor badge of vulnerability. But not to your mother. Try telling her that you don’t want kids because you don’t feel the simple, unconditional love between parent and child, and she’d become defensive and threaten to commit suicide for all the wrongs she’d done to you on your weekly, then monthly, then yearly calls.
Except on those calls, speak only English until you dream in it. It’ll take at least ten years before you no longer need to pretend-laugh at jokes at parties.
On Christmas, when an in-law’s in-law asks when you last returned to Thailand, don’t judge. It’s not as if you know how to spell Mississipi(?) or locate Newfoundland.
If someone asks what the deal is between Taiwan and China—and someone always asks—give this monologue (after you drink sufficient eggnog)…
(Continued…in upcoming short story collection “Someone Dies in Every Story”)
