The Rules of the Road Are Unspoken

by Madison Braybrooke (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Taiwan

Hundreds of scooters, in perfect unison, accelerate and turn as they flow through narrow streets like a school of small, colorful fish in the surf line at the beach. The Taiwanese commuters who ride them slide through the morning traffic without saying a thing, without honking a horn, and without any appearance of effort. The rules of the road are never spoken. The locals just know them: Don’t ever wait before entering an intersection on a fresh green. To do so would risk being struck from behind. Instead, watch the light on the cross street, and gun the engine when that light changes to yellow. When it rains, wear your poncho backward so it doesn’t catch the wind and smack a rider behind you. Focus on what is in front of you; what is behind you will take care of itself. As a foreigner in Taiwan, having a scooter is like having a golden ticket to the show. You are cool enough to join the locals and you get a front-row seat to their lives: The mother who casually ferries her three kids to school on a single scooter; the dog perched comfortably between the legs of his master while knifing through traffic; the schoolboys in their uniforms sharing a full-on conversation as they ride home parallel to each other, inches apart. You get to revel in the zip of your scooter and the brisk air hitting your face. You get to take in the ease of the ride and feel powerful, almost indestructible. But sometimes life throws you a car hanging a ridiculous right turn, and that blissful state of feeling unstoppable comes to, well, an abrupt stop. Within a blink I went from seeing just the intersection ahead to a very close-up view of the bold black letters T, A, X, and I, set against the door of a cab. I slammed on the brakes and heard my tires screech against the asphalt. My entire body lurched forward, carried by momentum. Time slowed and the back end of my scooter followed the path my body just took, rising through the air until it mirrored my body, perfectly vertical. Then time kicked back in and I was on the pavement, scooter on top of me. My scooter’s name is Rosie. She’s bright red and tiny with dainty racing stripes on the side. With the slightest shift in my body, Rosie glides wherever I want her to go. She’s light and perfect. But, when I picked her up after our mishap, a mirror was snapped clean off, several pieces of Rosie were crooked, scratched or just missing altogether. I had jumped up right after impact out of fear that I would get run over. By the time I got to the side of the road, I was just in shock that all my extremities were intact. I was bruised, but otherwise okay. As my brain started to process what had just happened, an unexpected fear crept in. What if I just lost my golden ticket? Rosie wasn’t just my in with the locals, she was the core of my independence. As someone who is half White and half Asian, I get stared at wherever I am in Taiwan. But when Rosie and I roll up to a stoplight, I’m just another rider wearing a helmet. I moved to Taiwan without speaking or understanding any Chinese, and I’m constantly off balance with almost every interaction I have with the locals. But the rules of the road are unspoken and I’ve grasped them through observation. Travel comes with change and change comes with discomfort. They’re like twins: you don’t get one without the other. Over the years, traveling through many countries, I’ve gotten pretty good at embracing the discomfort. But sometimes I need a break. Sometimes the best way to silence the flood of words I don’t know or to escape the gaze that makes me feel different comes down to doing something I KNOW how to do. Doing something that consistently brings me freedom, peace, and confidence. So you can imagine my joy when the scooter mechanic handed me my keys and said, “She’s golden.”