Summer and Europe

Summer always makes me yearn for Europe, even though I've never been to Europe in the summer. It is because everyone else seems to go to Europe in summer, and so I come across numerous travel articles and television shows about European destinations.

Indeed, every travel magazine, section of the newspaper, and television network, will re-do Paris a dozen ways or more every summer. In the New York Times not only does their travel section contain a "Europe for Every Budget" slideshow feature and a "Frugal Paris" article/slideshow among other travel section gems, but the summer Paris fever has bled into their art and movie sections as well. There are at least three recent articles or columns on Julia Child and the new movie "Julie & Julia," and a featured column in the art section on the viewing habits of today's museum-goers, focusing on the columnist's recent experience at the Louvre.

I haven't been to Paris in six years, but I feel the tug every summer, knowing full well that summer is the worst time to go. But they sure make it seem inviting, don't they?

The making of an Asian Anglophile-Europhile

I'm known for being an avid traveler, although I've often scolded myself for focusing only on England, Europe and the U.S., and failing to include Asia in my travels at all thus far (apart from a few return trips to Southern Taiwan, where I was born and still have family). I suppose even those that fancy themselves passionate about traveling can be allowed their favorite destinations, but being from Asia, I've always considered it a bit of a failing. Now that I am getting around to planning a visit to Japan and Hong Kong, I can put that all behind me.

Why is it that my interests have gone this way? I have two theories:

First, my Anglophile-Europhile tendencies in travel are due to the fact that they are "exotic" to me in the way that Asia is exotic to the Western world. I have a perceived familiarity with Asia because I was born there and my family is Asian. The cultural elements (food, language, faces, landscape) of Asia emphasized in novels, movies, television shows, etc., are fundamentally familiar to me. Thus the Asian cultural scene, while widely varying among the different Asian cultures and exotic to Westerners, has always been fundamentally un-exotic to me. British and European histories/cultures, on the other hand, fascinate me to no end.

Second, having spent most of my life living in the U.S., I know less about the history, geography and politics of Asian countries than I do England and Europe. I certainly learned less about it in school, and so am less familiar with Asia in the academic sense. So in fact it is a learned familiarity and knowledge of England and Europe that has bred my desire to spend more time there.

There you have it: a gloss on how the life of a Taiwanese-American immigrant has unconsciously shaped her travels (and probably also why I majored in English literature and have a very special spot for Henry James). I am sure there are deeper issues here that would make for great Asian-Am thesis material. More importantly to me, I am finally going to travel to Asia for something other than seeing extended family, and I am unbelievably excited (as I am before every big trip) to add these destinations to my roster of experiences.