By Yi-Jung Chen

In our muddy Yunlin village, Grandma was an odd soul. Raised like the male Thôo-lâng-kau-á—the Painted-Snipe who guards the nest alone—she ran a small street-food stall, her hands forever dusted with sesame seeds and powdered sugar.

Her specialty was Mā-hua-tsìng—fried twist dough. She loved dropping the twisted pastries into hot oil, watching them dance and puff up into golden perfection. But behind her quiet smile lay a long-buried sorrow. In a yellowed 1947 cigarette box, she kept a bloody farewell note smuggled from her executed father before a dawn firing squad—a secret message to the moon that cost her generation their voices.

“Is it the Strait blocking the sun, or God teasing our fate?” she used to whisper to the wind. To protect me from the island’s tragic past, she worked until her fingers calloused, saving every coin to send me across the Pacific to California. The ocean kept me safe, but it also split us apart like twisted dough.

When I left, her kitchen grew quiet. Determined to span eleven thousand kilometers, Grandma bought a tape player to learn basic English.

“Good morning,” the tape chimed.

“Niu-moo-nai,” Grandma repeated at 8 PM, her accent reshaping foreign words into Taiwanese for “a cow caressing an udder.”

When the phone finally rang from California, Grandma lifted the receiver and blurted proudly: “Niu-moo-nai, my boy! Niu-moo-nai!”

Staring at a bland microwave dinner under cold dormitory lights, my eyes stung. I tried my rusty Taiwanese: “A-má… wa-siông-kóng-Tâi-gí…” (Grandma… I want to speak Taiwanese with you…)

Panic seized Grandma. Thinking her English was too terrible, she dropped her cheat-sheet and shouted in desperation:

“Wait! No! Next time you cross the sea to come home, A-má will fry fresh Mā-hua-tsìng and Sugar Cakes for you! Crisp, sweet, dusted with white sugar! And hot pork noodles!”

Across the ocean, I burst into laughter—a warm sound that dissolved decades of distance. “Save a full plate for me, A-má,” I answered.

Grandma looked out at the dark paddies. The tape player hissed, but she didn’t need foreign words anymore. The young snipe had flown far across the ocean, but the sweet, fried aroma of home was already drawing it back across the Strait.

Yi-Jung Chen is a writer and poet based in Taiwan. Her work often draws from local Taiwanese ecosystems, historical memory, and culinary heritage.