A Little Help From My Friends 處處遇貴人

Almost anywhere you go around here, you find massive trees. Some reach clear across the street, often with aerial roots hanging down like ragged beards. When two or three of these giants stand close together, you can't tell which branches belong to which trunk.

In many ways, these huge trees are a metaphor for life in Taiwan.
If you look closely, the roots are intertwined, crossing over, or actually feeding into each other and back out again. Further up, the trunks may be joined at the hip, the bark now shared between them after years of close contact and continued growth. Even higher, branches from one tree support branches from the other, and vice versa.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. It can't here; that's for sure. We live in close proximity, often stacked on top of each other, but folks are used to that. Stuff gets done because people pitch in for each other. Everyone assumes the next guy could use a little help, if he wants it or not. It can be messy sometimes, but it works.

Someone in the street raises his voice to announce to no one in particular that a little blue truck parked in the alley is blocking a larger truck. Heads poke out of windows in nearby buildings. One head calls out to another head which ducks back inside, and, moments later, someone comes down with the keys. Problem solved.

A bus driver stops at a red light, opens his window and hollers. A lady comes running out of an eatery carrying a bag with a hot dinner to go. She hands it through the window to the driver, takes his cash and hands him his change. They've worked this out perfectly. He knows this red light is just long enough for the transaction, and they're expecting him with "the usual" all packed and ready when he gets there.

We've gotten so much help here. Ping's relatives have been unceasingly generous and resourceful. Her old classmates have done their best to help us settle in. Taiwanese friends visiting from the U.S. have treated us to dinner, taken care of our Stateside mail, referred clients, and brought us special things they know we can't get here.

You can't step into anyone's home without being offered tea or coffee or fruit, or all three. Strangers on the trail spontaneously hand us a map, a tangerine, or at the very least a good piece of advice, maybe going miles out of their way just to show us something special. We're learning how to respond in kind. Sometimes we feel like such beginners.

In the West, we place a high value on individualism and self-sufficiency. Here, interdependence is the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it's because we're constantly reminded by these giant trees that, in fact, we all get along with a little help from our friends.