Chapter 152

It feels like it’s been a while since we really talked about the money side of things, hasn’t it? That’s not just how it feels in the blog — that’s how it’s been in real life too. When something as large as the scams hit, life doesn’t just wobble, it shatters. Add a pre-planned wedding on top, something you can’t exactly stop or reschedule, and you can see why I’ve been writing more about reflection than about raw events. There were too many to list, too many small fires that weren’t worth dragging you through.

Lawyers. Accountants. The police, who honestly need a better cybercrime division. I won’t bore you with those conversations. What matters is this: the house was gone, but so was the debt. Financially, the alarms stopped blaring. But that didn’t mean the anxiety disappeared. My trust in my mom’s ability to handle her own life was still shaky. She’d give me updates about her finances, but instead of reassuring me, they only made me grind my teeth. I couldn’t shake the anger. I couldn’t forgive her.

Why? Was it because I was raised to hold myself to impossible standards and resented that she never did the same? Was it just hypocrisy I couldn’t stand? Or maybe I just needed someone close enough to blame, since the real criminals got away. Whatever it was, it followed me.

And then came the honeymoon.

It should have been a reprieve — a month-long trip across Asia, planned before I ever found out about the scams. But instead of pure celebration, the shadow of my mom’s mistakes followed me onto the plane.

There were three reasons it hit so hard. First, before the wedding I had work to distract me, to keep me from spiraling. But now I was free — dangerously free — with time to think. Second, I’d finished drafting the first version of this blog, and without my laptop I had no outlet to vent. Third, and worst of all: the scams had first exploded while my wife and I were on our last vacation abroad. I didn’t realize it until we landed, but the timelines overlapped almost perfectly. My body remembered, even when my mind didn’t.

So even on my honeymoon, there were nights when I lay awake wondering if my mom was doing something reckless again. Wondering if I’d come home to another disaster. Wondering if I was about to watch the last of my family’s wealth disappear.

She didn’t. But the fear left dark fingerprints all over what should have been the happiest trip of my life.

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Hong Kong was first. Hotter than we expected, and we were running on almost no sleep — our honeymoon began literally the day after the wedding. (Pro tip: don’t do that. Planning is a nightmare, and exhaustion steals the joy.) We stumbled through the city on maybe 30% energy. It was decent, but blurry.

Japan came last. And Japan is always Japan — polished, kind, reliable. The yen was at historic lows, so our Canadian dollars stretched farther than ever. Even tired, it was hard not to enjoy the sheer ease of being there.

But Taiwan — Taiwan was different.

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Taiwan surprised me.

The food was cheap, delicious even to someone who doesn’t care much about food. The streets felt alive, the night markets filled with youth dancing and performing under neon lights. Strangers welcomed us. People spoke my mother tongue everywhere — Mandarin — and for the first time in months, hearing it didn’t twist something inside me.

I even found breakdancers there, people like me. We hung out, shared stories, swapped moves. Just regular people, hustling to get by, holding onto community in a messy economy. Nothing glamorous. Nothing sinister. Just life.

I’d expected Taiwan to remind me of my childhood in China. Instead, it was gentler, softer. Scrappy, yes, but warm. And multilingual in a way that felt inviting — announcements in Mandarin, English, Japanese, Korean. As if the country itself was saying: we’ll make room for you, whoever you are.

It was in Taiwan that I realized how much perspective I’d lost.

In the months after the scams, Mandarin had become poisoned for me. It was the language of scammers calling me at night. The language of my mom’s pleading explanations. The language of hypocrisy and betrayal. Even my cousins spoke to me in English now, as if Mandarin itself had become taboo.

But Taiwan broke that.

Here, Mandarin was just a way to order food. A way to joke with a stranger. A way to connect with dancers in the street.

Not everyone who spoke Mandarin was my mom.

Not everyone who spoke Mandarin was a scammer.

Sometimes they were just kind strangers in a night market, offering you food, laughter, and a glimpse of a softer world.