We thought moving into a ruin was a good idea.
This one isn’t about tea. Just a small piece of life up here in the ruin, messy and real and very different from what we were used to.
Huge typhoon and thoughts
It’s officially been six months since we moved into the ruin. I thought I should take a moment (while a typhoon hammers down outside) to sit and write about it.
I’m sitting under our metal roof now, the rain hitting nonstop. It used to keep us awake, but it’s become the soundtrack of our lives. When we first moved in, we had insomnia from every tiny noise, the rustle of tree branches, wild cats sprinting, even snakes slithering across the roof. We heard everything, magnified tenfold.
One night not too long ago, a guy next door decided to make ceramics till way past midnight. He must’ve assumed no one lived up here, because he blasted music like he was performing at a rock concert. At first it was fine, but he started looping the same song. Over. And over. And over. Lea and I nearly lost our minds.
If it had been me in the past, I probably would’ve called the police, or marched over with a broom. But now? I just let him play - there’s something about knowing our time here isn’t forever that makes even the annoyances feel precious.
The past three days have been miserable weather wise, walking through puddles, drenched in 100% humidity, surrounded by relentless wind and rain. But weirdly, I’ve been smiling through it. Even drenched and half miserable, we can’t help but laugh. This is exactly the kind of trouble we dreamed up for ourselves.
Moving back to Taiwan
It’s been quite a journey coming back. When I scroll through my phone, I can’t believe how far we’ve come. Not in the success sense (we’re definitely behind on that score!), but in how much has changed.
It started with our trip to Japan in the summer of 2024, staying in an old house next to the suicide forest. No A/C. Just us and our summer roommate, José the spider. Our daily joy was biking to the only supermarket in town because it had air conditioning. At some point the heat won. I spent most of the summer in the bare minimum. Concentrating on anything was impossible.
Then we came to Taiwan. It took us a month to find our dream place (a literal ruin) and six more months to fix it up, all while learning about farming, permaculture, and tea.
The ruin itself is something else. We stumbled upon it while looking for a ceramics studio in the mountains. The courtyard was beautiful, and when we peeked into the nearby empty houses, #6 instantly felt like ours. It was moldy, half outdoors, barely standing, but it spoke to us.
When we told our parents, they were horrified. What are you thinking?! But we pressed on. We were determined to prove this madness would work.
Building the ruin
It wasn’t easy, but we loved every minute of it. Lea and I are the kind of people who get excited by hardship - our friends can attest. Turning a broken house into a home felt like our badge of coolness.
We fought, of course, mostly over design choices. Lea has strong opinions about windows. She collected old ones from the street, a hostel in Taitung, and a dusty old wood shop in Taipei. When our woodworker didn’t want to install one of them, she pushed. And pushed. And won. I was mortified during the exchange, but it turned out beautiful, worth every second of her stubbornness.
The tea room (a.k.a. my reading room) was my first attempt at carpentry. I built a wooden bench with storage and somehow managed to level the floor. It involved five kinds of screws, gallons of wood glue, and an endless parade of mosquito bites.
We made almost everything ourselves, the chairs, the dining table, even a couch out of ceramic bricks. When I brought home a massive circular saw from B&Q, both Lea and my mom screamed until I returned it. (“It’s too dangerous! Return it or else!”) I did return it… and immediately bought a smaller, handheld one. It cuts only plywood, which is why our place now looks unintentionally like a very budget version of a Donald Judd showroom, built by amateurs with questionable measuring skills.
One of our proudest finds was a window from Taitung that opens like a vertical wooden blind. It’s adorable. We also scored two old stools and a ladder from a hardware store in Tainan. The owner literally said, “I don’t know why you love this junk. It’s old and wobbly!” But we loved it anyway. The ladder barely fit in our car; Lea had to sit with her head poking through one of its rungs the whole 5-hour ride home.
Settling in
One night, we decided to make our own movie theater. Two nails in the wall, a wooden pole, a white linen sheet, an old projector, popcorn, and boom - we had cinema. I don’t even remember what we watched, but it was the coziest night. That was when it hit me, we were home.
Of course, life here isn’t without surprises. The cockroaches come after the rain, and the rats come whenever they please. Lea’s terrified of roaches, she once found one hiding in a bag of passion fruit from her dad. Instead of tossing the bag, she tied it up three times and fled the house. When I got home, she told me from behind a closed bathroom door.
I eventually found the culprit under the last passion fruit, sprayed it, and declared victory. Lea emerged cheering, and then proceeded to wash and eat the fruit anyway. Wild. The New York version of Lea would’ve thrown the whole bag out without blinking. I like wild Lea better.
So much happens here every day in this little broken space, I can’t possibly fit it all into one entry. Maybe I’ll just write it down bit by bit as memories come back.
For now, I’ll keep enjoying this strange, chaotic, and beautiful home that most people would find utterly unlivable.
If you made it down here, I owe you a cup of tea one day. And if you ever feel like saying hi, I’d love that.
Love love love reading these updates from this new chapter <3
What an update! 🤣
cheers to the crazy life, and also now I want a cup of tea with you guys