4 Quotes by Shawna Yang Ryan

I understand,” she says, and then she quotes Du Fu: “The country is broken, but the mountains and rivers remain.” Her eyes flash; he catches sight of the fire in this modest woman. “We are the mountains and rivers,” he says, impressed. “No matter what the country is called.

We are curious creatures, we Taiwanese. Orphans. Eventually, orphans must choose their own names and write their own stories. The beauty of orphanhood is the blank slate.

I think you expect I will say that Western is modern, and that our culture is old-fashioned. But I don’t believe that. I don’t believe the West equals modernity. The idea is colonialist.

Maybe this is what it meant to be a citizen of a place – bonded to each other by the histories thrust upon us.