A love letter to China

Esther is a confused human being
4 min readJan 18, 2025

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One night, my Chinese roommate spoke up, her voice hesitant but clear. “Sometimes, when you talk about China, it feels like you don’t like me just because I’m Chinese.” You might find it surprising, even a bit wild, that a Chinese person said this to a Taiwanese person. But after four years of Minerva education and two years living together, we’ve become more like family than just roommates.

She explained that while she understood my perspective, some of my remarks made her uneasy, especially since we live under the same roof. I could see where she was coming from. Tbh, the Taiwan-China issue didn’t really hit me until the Ukrainian war. Before that, war was something I only saw in movies.

But then, seeing the Ukrainian kids at school — wounded, broken, with their eyes hollowed by trauma — made me feel like I was living in a war zone myself. Every day, I watched them gather in the halls, their faces heavy with grief, stress, and anger. Even my sweetest, softest Ukrainian friend confessed that they wanted to kill Russians. It haunted me. The pain in their eyes was a mirror of something deeper, something far beyond the politics of nations. It was a raw, human wound.

And now, when I thought of the possibility of a China-Taiwan war, I felt my body tense, my shoulders weighed down by an invisible burden. The thought of it was suffocating.

Even though my Chinese roommate might not have experienced the same level of stress as I did during the Ukrainian conflict, I’m sure she can empathize with the emotional stress. She said, “I remember X, a Ukrainian kid, and Y, a Russian kid — they used to be best friends. They’d stay up late, talking about everything. But when the war started, everything changed. It was like… it became impossible to be friends anymore. They couldn’t do it.”

She looked at me with a mix of sadness and something else, something deeper. “Maybe, if the war happens… maybe we won’t be able to be friends anymore,” she said quietly.

Her words lingered between us, a quiet truth we both understood.

“I’ll feel so guilty if that happens,” she continued, her voice breaking slightly. I could see the sadness in her eyes.

The weight of her words settled into my heart. I imagined it — living with someone whose country might be at war with mine. It was an impossible thought. But then again, Esther didn’t think like most people. So, I decided to address the two things that had been eating at her: (1) her discomfort with my comments about China, and (2) her guilt about what might happen if the war came.

For (1), since I’m someone who’s very receptive to feedback, I decided to change. I’d always been someone open to feedback, always willing to adjust. I reached out, took her face in my hands, and looked her in the eye. “Don’t worry,” I said, my voice warm with sincerity. “From now on, I’ll tell you every day how much I love China, and how much I love the Chinese people.”

At first, I thought I’d said the right thing. But then I noticed her face. She didn’t look reassured. In fact, she seemed even more uncomfortable than before. I had no idea how to fix it. HAHAHAHAHA

For (2), I reassured her that I believed she’d be there for all of us — my Taiwanese family too — if anything bad happened. If war broke out, she’d open her home to us. She’d feed us, shelter us.If that wasn’t possible, no worries. She could start today, right now.

“Listen,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “If anything bad happens, you can start by doing my laundry. Pay my rent. Give me a massage. Buy me dessert. That way, if the war comes, you won’t feel guilty anymore.”

From that moment on, I felt a strange excitement whenever I saw her. Because she was actually preparing for the worst — taking real steps, however small, to make things right, to ease her guilt.

If war happens, we might be torn apart — perhaps never to meet again. As humans, we carry burdens — some inherited from our families, others from our countries, our cultures, or even from our own identities. We are each shaped by our differences, by our beliefs and values. Even when we share the same faith, it doesn’t always mean we can walk the same path. We’re bound by our biases, drawn into the complexities of in-groups and out-groups, sometimes so entangled that no one knows how to loosen the knot. Yet, despite it all, in my heart, there is already a place for her, untouchable by time or circumstance.

And that, is the love letter.

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