The time to live and the time to die
(Tong nien wang shi)

Grandmother used to call the boy Ah Ha. He was her favourite. One afternoon, not long after the family settled in Taiwan, she took him on a trip to the country to find the road back to China. “The road to the mainland is straight, she said. You go to the river dike, cross the bridge, and there’s a patch of yellow vegetables. Go through the vegetables fields, over by the bamboo forest, and there’s our home…”