Across the road, a sign read “Castle Quarter.” A shopping centre, I thought. My instinct led me uphill on Cattle Market Street, then Farmers Avenue. It did not take long until the familiar sight of a castle emerged from behind the trees on the top of the hill. It stood there majestically, commanding the entire city, only dwarfed by a yellow tower crane. Seeing the castle filled me with a strange sense of satisfaction, and nostalgia.

I kept on walking around the wall made with a mix of bricks and flint stones — a homage to the city’s heritage, I gathered—passing the Bell Hotel, to reach Castle Meadow. Standing at the bottom of the hill, I could truly feel the imposing presence of Norwich Castle. But my attention was soon directed across the road to the colourful “A City of Stories” mural by Joey La Meche. It narrated the city’s medieval tales: the castle, horse-riding soldiers and warriors, and busy market vendors. Connected to the mural is a graphic on the ceiling that resembled that of ‘Le Monde’ in Tarot de Marseilles with the slogan “Fear None; Love All” that tells of the artist’s wish for a better world.

Ahead of me, I could see the decorative features on the exterior of the Royal Arcade: colourful motifs, geometric shapes, and stained glass. I did not stick around trying to decode the symbolism of all the graphics. Instead, I wandered into a long hallway of Victorian grandeur, made even more splendid by the symmetrical arches, woodwork, and the Art Nouveau lanterns. Where’s the Colman’s Museum? Is it gone? The shops in the hallway looked familiar. He liked mustard.

Jackpot! Market stalls! I had a grin on my face as I saw the vendors busying themselves with their customers. The smell of food only made my transition from indoors to outdoors more pleasant. My twitching eyelids seemed to be telling my good fortune. I had a feeling that my quest was about to come to an end. I paced myself through the stalls under those vibrant stripy rooftops and imagined how packed this market must be on a market day, especially with all the high street shops around. I was walking up a slope, and soon the slope turned into flights of stairs. I saw that flint stone fortress-like building — Norwich Guildhall, I later found out — on my right. This all felt right. My walk soon turned into a run up the stairs. The bronze lions! I raced across the street, then to the landing at the top of some more stairs. Breathless, I quickly turned around and saw the scenery that had haunted me all those years. At that instant, those pieces of my memory jigsaw came together.

I made it, and I knew where exactly I was standing. I was updating my memories by labelling the buildings and places in front of me. Suddenly, Norwich was no longer a distant memory to me, but a place that I experienced and learnt about through my wandering.

The seagulls were still making that same noise as I stood there taking in the panoramic view of everything before me. The city felt different, and I, too, felt different.

Shengchi Hsu (October 2024)

Shengchi Hsu, born and raised in Taichung Taiwan, received his MA in English from the University of Salford and studied for a Ph.D. in Literary Translation at the University of Warwick. He has now returned to Taiwan, where he works as an English tutor, after spending two decades as an FE Lecturer in English and Education in Manchester, U.K.

As a second-language translator into English, he has contributed two short story translations, “A Daughter (女兒命)” by Lin You-hsuan (林佑軒) and ‘Violet (紫花)’ by Hsu Yu-cheng (徐譽誠) to Queer Taiwanese Literature: a Reader. He has also co-translated eight classical Taiwanese Han (漢) poems with Canadian poet, Evan Jones, which were published in the PN Review.

He is currently completing the translation of 囚徒 by Qiu Miao-jin (邱妙津) to be featured in the Strangers Press series of Literature from Taiwan chapbooks. On completion, he will begin translating Taiwanese poetry from the Japanese colonial period and the poetry of the prominent Taiwanese poet, Xiang Yang 向陽.

The residency was part of our collaboration with the Cultural Division of the Taipei Representative Office in the UK and the National Museum of Taiwan Literature and was offered with support from the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan.