"Aller Anfang ist schwer." (All beginnings are hard.)

Readers respond to Michelle's essay on language learning, with an aside on divers in Jeju; plus events next Saturday and book club details

Hello dear readers! 

We’ve been floored by the flood of messages to Michelle’s essay on language learning. You’ve written in with some profound meditations on love, identity, migration. We’ve collected a series of reader responses for you here.

We’ve been following the news of gun violence in the U.S. and like everyone, we were especially gutted by the story of the orphaned five-year-old who lost his little sister and parents in Allen, Texas. The prevalence of these incidents have left us speechless, although there’s so much more that could and should be said.

Meanwhile, the news occupying the general consciousness in Taiwan has also not been good. Though it certainly doesn’t match the scale and tragedy of mass shootings in America, a series of deaths related to public safety have left many people here outraged and in mourning. This week a migrant worker fell from a construction crane, where he had not been properly belted, and died. The next day a three-year-old child was hit and kille…