Ai Guo, Making Sandwiches in Shu Lin

SHULIN TOWNSHIP, TAIPEI COUNTY, TAIWAN (MPI) — Ai Guo used to sell me freshly made beef and chicken sandwiches on my way home from teaching in Shu Lin, an outer suburb of Taipei. Very nice guy, with a family and kids. We passed through the SARS era together, thus the comment about his business being better now that SARS is gone. (“Nǐ hen mǎng, bye-bye SARS”).

We chatted almost every day, as his sandwiches were delicious. Even with our very limited conversation, with my extremely limited Chinese at the time and his limited English, we somehow managed to become friendly, known entities to each other, if not exactly “friends.” Perhaps someday, when my Chinese is good enough, I’ll go back down there and visit him, to have a real conversation.

And he was, of course, a very good sport, to indulge all this filming by a goofy American foreigner.