Stupid Xenophobic Parrots: On Transitions and Transformation.

Michelle adjusts to a new life in Taiwan. Plus, photos of baby Jesus carrying a syringe.

I met a parrot in a park in Taipei one Sunday afternoon. It was gorgeous, resplendent, its plumage all the colors of the rainbow. It had great posture. Children circled around it, delighted. The parrot’s guardian—owner sounds wrong—noticed me admiring it too.

“Say hello,” he urged, proudly. “It will say hello back.”

Hello, I said, in Mandarin.

No response.

Hello! I repeated, more insistently. Hello!

The parrot looked at me, then looked away.

Then the parrot guy spoke again. “You’re not from Taiwan?”

I shook my head. He nodded, as if that explained it.

Not even parrots will talk to me, I thought to myself as I walked away, dejected.

I’ve been here long enough to be used to people’s confusion when they hear my accent. But a parrot? This was a new level of humiliation. Besides, of course I know the Chinese word for hello. I’ve known it since I was born, more or less. How could my pronunciation be wrong? Since the encounter I’ve been veering between hostility (“Stupid xenophobic parrot,” I mut…