Taiwan

As you may or may not know, I’m a huge San Antonio Spurs fan and an NBA fan in general. I grew up just outside of Houston during the height of the Olajuwon era, so I was a Rockets fan as a kid. We were all conditioned to hate the Spurs, our biggest rivals, so it really speaks to everything the Spurs organization represents that they were able to convert me in adulthood. If you follow the NBA, you know that the Spurs made a lot of moves in the off-season. Like any fan, I’m extremely impatient for the new season to start so we can all stop speculating about how all the new pieces will fit into the well-oiled Spurs machine. Finding a way to relate my passion for the sport to my recent trip to Taiwan proved to be a great distraction from that.

I didn’t initially set out to make this list, but after spotting my second NBA jersey during the first few days, I thought it would be interesting to keep a running tally of any jerseys I spotted. I was particularly curious which players and teams were popular overseas in a country that hasn’t really produced any NBA players, and where the fans may not have the same local allegiances that we do here in the States. Keep in mind that I was staying in hotels and visiting a lot of tourist attractions, so my experience may not be an accurate representation of the everyday population. Some of these people may also have been mainlanders. Also, it’s difficult to tell if all of these people are real fans or if they just enjoy wearing jerseys as fashion accessories. Nevertheless, 13 players from 10 different teams are represented here in this list. The Warriors and the Bulls seem to be the most popular teams.

I was a bit surprised not to see a single Jeremy Lin jersey from any of his many teams as he is, of course, Taiwanese-American. Though I am not a JLin fan myself, it made me sad to think that his popularity has waned not only in the States but also in Taiwan. I did, however, see someone wearing a New York Knicks Linsanity T-shirt on the subway.

1. Portland Trailblazers [player unknown]

Since I hadn’t started making this list yet when I spotted my first jersey, I can offer no details here. It was a current design, so my best guess is it was a Damian Lillard or LaMarcus Aldridge jersey. I think we were at a restaurant.

2. Phoenix Suns [Jason Kidd]

Spotted on the MRT en route to the Taipei Zoo. It was nice to see a vintage jersey for a retired player. As you’ll see further down the list, most of the jerseys I spotted were of current superstars.

3. San Antonio Spurs [Kawhi Leonard]

Spotted at the Taipei Zoo in front of the Przewalski’s horse. Kawhi happens to be my favorite current player, so I was happy to see someone with his jersey right off the bat.

4. Golden State Warriors [Stephen Curry]

Spotted at the Daan MRT station. The current golden boy; no surprises there.

5. Miami Heat [LeBron James]

Spotted at the Chimei Museum in Tainan. Again, no surprises there. I honestly thought there would be more LeBron jerseys around.

6. Toronto Raptors [Vince Carter]

Spotted walking the streets at Tamsui.

7. Chicago Bulls [Derrick Rose]

Spotted at the Raohe Street Night Market.

8. Golden State Warriors [Klay Thompson]

Spotted at the Raohe Street Night Market.

9. Golden State Warriors [Stephen Curry]

Spotted at the Raohe Street Night Market. This is the place to go if you’re on the lookout for NBA jerseys, I guess. This is also marks the first repeat player I witnessed. (For the record, #8 and #9 were not together.)

10. Chicago Bulls [Derrick Rose]

Spotted yet again at the Raohe Street Night Market. I would wonder if it was the same guy as the other one, but I saw one right after the other and they were coming from opposite directions. Still, seems like a strange coincidence. I had not seen a single Bulls jersey until then.

11. Dallas Mavericks [Dirk Nowitzki]

Spotted at the Taipei Bus Station. I thought I would see more foreign players, to be honest.

12. Indiana Pacers [Paul George #24]

Spotted at breakfast in the Dandy Hotel in Taipei. I saw this jersey again later that morning. I’m not entirely sure if it was the same person (all Asian people look the same, yada yada), but I assume so.

13. Chicago Bulls [Ben Gordon]

Spotted in the Dandy Hotel lobby. I’m not 100% sure on this one. The guy was wearing a jacket (in that heat, why?) so all I saw was a #7. As far as I can tell, no superstar ever wore #7 for the Bulls. Of all the players on this list he is the only one I’m not familiar with, but I see he won Sixth Man of the Year once, so I guess he has name recognition. (I don’t really follow the Eastern Conference.)

14. Oklahoma City Thunder [Kevin Durant]

Spotted in the Dandy Hotel lobby. She was with #13.

15. Chicago Bulls [Michael Jordan]

Spotted in the Dandy Hotel lobby. Again, I’m not 100% sure on this. She was also wearing a jacket that obscured most of the jersey. But she seemed to be wearing MJ’s number. She was with #12. Only #14 and #15 on this list were worn by young women.

As I tweeted earlier this week, I will be visiting Taiwan for the first time in 10 years at the beginning of September. I thought I would take this opportunity to throw it back to the summer of 2005 when I took that last trip because so much has changed since then. In doing so, I also got to look through all the photos I took during that trip (with my cumbersome 3.2 megapixel digital camera, I might add) for the first time in years. I plan to take many more on this upcoming trip.

I flew to Taiwan from Houston mere days after my high school graduation. I did not walk at commencement, a personal decision of mine that everyone told me I would one day regret. To this day, I do not regret it. If anything, it made my college graduation, which was one of the happiest and proudest days of my life, that much more meaningful. At that time, however, it gave me a strange feeling of being in limbo, as if I had never actually graduated at all.

While I was in Taiwan, I wrote a short essay about that feeling. I don’t think I ever read it again afterwards — maybe once, long ago, but certainly not recently. I think I was honest with myself in a way I very rarely am, and it’s also worthy mentioning that I wrote it by hand in a blue notebook. (Now that notebook has been dismantled because the covers were always falling apart. I used to carry it everywhere, though I never wrote anything substantial in it because I so disliked writing anything longhand.) Here is an excerpt of that essay, which I am just now reading again:

I’m writing this essay by hand because I feel that that’s the way it’s meant to be. I always had trouble with my fingers moving my pen fast enough to keep up with my mind the way they could on the keyboard of my laptop. My typed words always seemed to fit more perfectly together. But maybe they aren’t as real. And maybe that’s kind of the point. Maybe everything in my head isn’t worth putting down on paper and my pen can filter out those useless words. Or maybe not. I guess it doesn’t really matter just so long as I write what I’m feeling. I’ve always felt that I feel things too deeply. Or maybe the trouble was that I didn’t feel them deeply enough. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes.

[…]

I’ve seen that so much in the past couple of weeks. They’ve been hard, I guess. Too much change happening too fast. Graduation was kind of what made all my thoughts on the matter. Everybody was walking onto the floor and I was crying before they’d even reached their seats because I was already at my seat but it wasn’t where it should’ve been.

Frankly I cannot share most of the essay because it was rather angst-ridden, and most of what I was angst-ridden about is no longer worth revisiting. But I think it was rather an insightful look at my state of mind at that point in time and I’m really glad I wrote it. I stopped journaling in the middle of college because I just found it exhausting and I was very busy. I stopped journaling on real paper way before that; it was during my freshman year of high school, I believe. I miss being able look back on a specific year and remember what exactly was going through my mind in those days. I wish I’d kept it up.

One of my goals this fall is to start blogging more often. It always feels so daunting. I do not like writing long things. I do not like it, Sam-I-Am. I do not like it sitting in a chair. I do not like it sitting on a bear. That’s why I started tweeting in the first place, and that has been great. But sometimes 140 characters can be a bit limiting. I vow now not to feel intimidated by a non-existent page quota! I can write a 3-sentence microblog if I want to! This is not college! I do not have to have perfect grammar! I don’t have to write filler! I don’t even have to sound coherent if I don’t want to! This is my blog! And I can do what I want to, do what I want to!

Whew, I feel much better now that I’ve gotten out all the inane children’s books quotes and 1960s song lyrics that are forever bouncing around inside my head. Anyway, assuming I can get decent wifi in my various hotel rooms, I will be blogging throughout my trip. These will most assuredly be brief microblogs because I will be writing them on my phone.

by Susan L. Lin 林🦕

writer, artist, sewist, dancer, dinosaur

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