“Crack”, the sound of the PVC pipe making contact with the back of my thigh rebounded off the narrow walls of the corridor. I crumpled onto the floor, blood slowly oozing out of the new wound caused by the sheer impact of the pipe. Once the tennis practice ended, I limped to the nurse where things turned weird. After my wound had been cleaned, the nurse asked me what happened. After I told her the nurse’s office was filled with adults I had never met, with the only familiar face being the principal who was taking photos of my injury.

Now, this wasn’t the first time I had been hit, but this time was different. Other people were hit in school, but this felt more like an adult, my tennis coach, someone that I trusted, taking his anger out on a first grader. A blonde haired, blue eyed first grader, who looked different from everybody else.

Growing up in Taiwan, I had always believed myself to be Taiwanese. So, when other kids referred to me as foreigner “外國人”, or American “美國人”, it would always make me angry. This verbal bullying was soon followed by physical bullying. On almost a daily basis, I would either have things like rocks thrown at me or be chased around the massive campus by groups of fifth or even sixth graders. All because to them I was different. This was always confusing to me, because I truly believed with all my heart that I was Taiwanese.

Another problem I faced was making friends. Making friends outside of the tennis team was a rarity for me, I was often excluded from games because I was American. Or I would be the seeker whenever we played hide and seek, which was borderline impossible due to the sheer size of our campus. As time went on, I slowly began to feel as if I no longer belonged in Taiwan even though Taiwan was the only place that was even remotely close to being my home.

In Taiwanese local schools, disciplining kids through physical means was common. However, teachers seemed to take it much further when it came to me. And unlike the tennis coach, other teachers seemed to be good at not leaving any serious marks. One example of this was my second-grade homeroom teacher. One time she was upset with me and decided to dig her fingernails into my stomach and pinch me as hard as she could. This left my stomach bleeding and me crying in front of all my classmates at the time -- the ultimate embarrassment.

After local school, I moved to Taipei American School. This move was at the start of fifth grade, and I was instantly making new friends, and most importantly the bullying had stopped. However, being at TAS I noticed that everyone there had grown up with people that are different than them, which, in turn, gave them the tools to deal with situations that other kids at my old local schools probably couldn’t understand. It is through my experience at TAS that I can understand why I was treated differently, and it has helped me see that, even though what happened to me was awful, the kids and even some of the adults who did these things were not necessarily bad people. I also learned that, even though I was bullied because I was a minority in my early years of public school, that this wasn’t the same as being subjected to systemic racism. My bullying was limited to how I was treated at school. All of my experiences have helped me to not only love and appreciate Taiwan more as a country, but also helped me acknowledge Taiwan as my one and only home.

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