#2 - Yōyū of the Taiwanese People

This article is part of my Sabbatical series. If you have not read the previous essays, you can read them here.

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There’s an author I’ve long admired, Craig Mod. Like with most people one comes to admire, something about their work must resonate with your value system. The same is true of my love for Craig. I love Craig’s work because his writing - and whatever he’s shared about his creative process - evokes in me the same sense of values that I want to live my life by. A life dedicated to craft. A life with intention.

Craig was recently on tour with his latest book, Things Become Other Things, and one stop on his book tour was on the Rich Roll Podcast. On the show, Craig talked about the Japanese concept of yōyū (Craig has lived in Japan since he was 19 years old, he’s 45 now) which crudely translates to “abundant heart.” The word can mean “margin,” “space,” “room,” or “surplus,” both in terms of time and emotional space. But Craig was specifically talking about it from the perspective of abundance in one’s heart. He shared a small but lovely anecdote on the pod that I want to recount.

He was 19 and had just landed at Narita International Airport. He had taken the Narita Express to get to Tokyo Station and was trying to get Hatagaya in Shibuya but found himself turned around. An older lady in her 40s saw him looking befuddled trying to find his way in this new city and asked him where he was trying to go. On learning his destination and realizing he was still 30 minutes out, she personally escorted him all the way there helping him transfer trains along the way! And that, Craig said, was yōyū in action. Abundance and space in one’s heart and mind and time of day to help out a complete stranger.

I’m really glad to have learned this word because it helped me articulate what I experienced in Taiwan recently.

On our second day in Taiwan, after a full day’s drive to Sun Moon Lake, we went out for dinner on the main strip of shops in Shuishe neighborhood. After a wholesome meal, the cousins and I decided to get some ice cream and check out the neighborhood before the shops closed. We came across an extremely cute store selling Taiwanese snacks and handcrafted decorative items. With ice creams in hand, we started to browse the store only for me to realize that my ice cream was melting in the sweltering heat and I should go out before I make a mess on the floor. The store’s proprietor, Ms. Dee, noticed me leaving and said “It’s okay, you can eat here,” then kindly offered me a napkin. The group of us started to pick out items we liked - nougat crackers, Taipei 101 souvenirs, Sun Moon Lake magnets.

As we shopped, the ice cream was devoured and I held the wrapper and napkin in hand to throw out once I got back to the hotel. Ms. Dee noticed this, tapped my shoulder and asked me to follow her. She took me to a back room and pointed at a trash can, allowing me to discard the waste. As I started to turn around, she pointed at something behind me. I turned and noticed she was pointing at a sink. She mimed with her hands and said “Wash.” I said thank you profusely, floored by her kindness and keen observation, and washed my hands. As I walked out of the back room, Ms. Dee stood there again with napkins so I could wipe down my hands. It was a small gesture but one executed with so much kindness and grace that I couldn’t help but feel indebted with gratitude.

On our third day, in the indigenous town of Ita Thao, a gentleman walked up to me and my two brothers. All three of us are Sikhs who observe our faith wearing turbans in public and keep unshorn hair. We all have thick beards and mustaches and are very easy to pick out of a crowd. As we were walking by the water, this Taiwanese gentleman came up to us and looked at us curiously. His body language was warm and he was chewing on something that gave his teeth a red veneer. He didn’t speak a lick of English and we couldn’t say anything other than “hello” and “thank you” in Chinese. He kept trying to convey something to us but any basis of communication was hard to establish, even with multiple translation apps. Eventually, we resorted to old school charades. He pointed to me and my brothers, then gestured with his hand over his chin as if stroking a beard. Then held up the 👌🏽 sign. He then mimed a “clicking” gesture to indicate he wanted a picture. We put it all together! He thought our beards were lovely and he wanted a picture with us. He then showed this picture to his friends and bragged about our beards from what we could tell. Then this same thing happened again when we were walking through the streets of Tainan.

As someone with a turban and a beard, the West has always viewed us with some degree of hostility. My credibility and trust as an on-par human needs to be established quickly so that I’m not perceived as a threat. To instead be perceived curiously and admired for my looks was such a welcome change! And for that gentleman, for him to walk up to us, to not have a shared language, stick it out, and still convey to us that he liked what he saw required abundance in his heart.

These weren't isolated incidents - kindness seemed woven into daily life. My sister lost her glasses at a bus stop in Taipei only to find them still there the following day. We celebrated Rakhi in our Taipei hotel which our hotel owner found so curious he gave us a Taoist talisman in exchange for sharing a rakhi with him. People invited us into their homes in Tainan to show us how they lived. Street vendors offered us free winter melon juice and peanut rolls. When we insisted to pay, they’d vigorously shake their head denying payment, then they’d bow down to say thank you.

After experiencing so much yōyū, I found myself reflecting on what its source is. In college, one of my favorite classes ever was Social Psychology. It was the first time I learned about the differences between individualist and collectivist cultures. I grew up in a collectivist society in India but have spent the last 14 years in a radically individualist one in the United States. In thinking about yōyū, I wondered strongly whether its reason for existence is the strong collectivism of eastern cultures or whether there was room for yōyū in more individualist societies? It’s not that yōyū is absent in the West but it is certainly not how the collective web of people go about their day. You always find people with yōyū everywhere but the world could always do with more.

Even before the trip began, friends who had been to Taiwan earlier had told me that I’d love the people there. “So warm,” “so welcoming” were the phrases used most often. But my lived experience showed me exactly how much, despite the lack of a common language. There were no grand gestures, just small things that people did everywhere that made us feel taken care of. In coming back to the US, my hope is to be the source of yōyū for others as the lovely people of Taiwan were for me.