Li Ming had always known he was “Taiwanese,” but that identity was more like a label than a real part of his life. He grew up in New York, spoke English, ate burritos, and watched American football. Only occasionally, on Lunar New Year’s Eve, did he make dumplings with his parents.

As for Chinese, he had studied it — and studied it quite seriously, taking classes with a teacher from Beijing, Mr. Wang. So he wasn’t the least bit worried about visiting family and friends in Taiwan.

On his second morning in Taiwan, his grandma took him to the breakfast shop at the end of the lane that she had been going to for thirty years. Li Ming thought: ordering breakfast — how hard can it be?

He walked up to the counter and spoke in the standard Mandarin he was so proud of:

“Hello, boss. I’d like a xianbing (meat pie), and a soy milk, room temperature is fine.”

The shop owner’s wife looked up, a little puzzled: “What kind of xianbing?”

Li Ming was puzzled too. Did xianbing in Taiwan come in different flavors? “Pork?”

By then Grandma was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes. She explained a few things to the owner in Taiwanese, then told Li Ming: “‘Changwen’ is how they say it in mainland China. In Taiwan we say ‘shiwen,’ or just ‘not iced.’ And people here don’t say ‘xianbing’ — you should say ‘shaobing.'”

In the afternoon, his cousin took him to the supermarket to buy fruit. Li Ming saw a yellow fruit and immediately said:

“Oh! Boluo (pineapple)! I love boluo!”

His cousin turned around, totally confused: “Boluo? You mean fengli! Nobody in Taiwan says that!”

Li Ming was silent for three seconds. “Then what about boluo bread? Don’t you call it boluo bread too?”

His cousin thought for a moment. “True, but a pineapple is a fengli. Boluo bread has nothing to do with pineapples, so it’s boluo bread — you can’t call it fengli bread.”

In the evening, the whole family gathered for dinner. Wanting to be polite, Li Ming said something to his uncle that he thought was very formal:

“Uncle, thank you for all your hard work.”

The whole table went quiet for a second, then everyone burst out laughing.

His uncle scratched his head and said, “Oh, what hard work? I’m not your employee…”

Grandma explained, “In Taiwan, ‘xinku le’ is usually said to your staff or to people working for you. We don’t really say it to elders. It sounds… a bit odd.”

After dinner, Li Ming sat alone on the balcony, looking out at the Taipei night view. He wondered: how many things did I actually say right today?

Grandma brought out a cup of hot tea and sat down beside him. She didn’t say much — just, in her Mandarin mixed with a Taiwanese accent: “Everything you said today, Grandma understood.”

Li Ming thought for a moment and said, “But what I speak isn’t Taiwanese Mandarin.”

Grandma shook her head. “Language — how can there be a standard? When your grandpa was young he spoke Japanese, later he spoke Taiwanese, and after that he spoke Mandarin. He spoke three languages his whole life, each with an accent, but every one of them was real.”

Li Ming was quiet for a while, then asked, “So what does my Chinese count as?”

“It counts as a beginning,” Grandma said, “and a good one.”

He went back to his room, opened the notes app on his phone, and wrote down the words he had learned that day, one by one — not to criticize himself, but because he knew the list would keep growing tomorrow, and that was proof he was still learning.