thetaxbreak

i'd had a couple of motorcycle accidents before, but as yet hadn't actually come off the bike, so the physical evidence of my misfortune was that much more powerful as i sat staring at it in a dimly-lit hotel room in Hualien on Taiwan's east coast. it turned out that i'd been very lucky, sustaining just a pair of scraped knees and an awfully large blister on the palm of my hand. along with some bruising to the ego, of course. the thing that hurt most was actually my rear, owing to the time it spent in the saddle getting to Hualien, but i couldn't complain because i was lucky the bike was still ridable after going down.

some good start to our last week in Taiwan, but at the end of this June day we were feeling lucky just to be in one piece. we had already made one trip around the Ilha Formosa, as related in thecircumnavigation post, and were doing it again, in reverse, to bide our time before touring Southeast Asia so that we could take advantage of the favorable tax conditions our staying in the country would provide. Taiwan derives most of its revenues from the heavy taxation of imports, and so income taxes are kept at a very friendly (and easy to calculate) six percent for residents. to be a resident, however, a non-native must be in the country for at least 184 consecutive days. since non-residents pay a relatively hefty 20 percent, we decided to hang around until July 4th so we could save some of the money we'd soon want to be spending touring other exotic locales. we also got a chance to see a couple of the things we had so far missed, allowing us to truthfully say there are only about two things in the Taiwan guidebook that we haven't seen.


a map of Taiwan, the beautiful island. we started this trip from our home in Fengyuan, just north of Changhua on the west side of the island, and rode over the Central Cross-island Highway (sort of) to the popular east coast resort town of Hualien. on subsequent days we rode further south to Taitung, then through Fengkang and back up to Kaohsiung and Tainan in the west, and back to Fengyuan.

our goal for the first of our five days was fairly modest we thought, involving at most 150 miles of riding across the famed Central Cross-island Highway, one of only two roads to do such a thing. we figured it would take no more than five hours to make the trip and looked forward to being in Hualien in time for a good dinner and a nice trip to the beach. when we finally arrived there 11 hours after setting off, i was left sitting in that little hotel room, my beaten body aching from the journey, wondering just what had happened to all that time and how we could have been so wrong in our estimates. as i looked back i couldn't see any one thing that could account for the discrepancy, so i took each item in its turn. first, when we were just a half hour out of Fengyuan, we were riding along happily when my right arm, the throttle arm, suddenly shrieked with pain and had to let off the gas. i couldn't tell what was wrong but thought i'd been hit by road debris as i could see a mark of some sort on my bare forearm. i tried to soldier on but the pain was so exquisite that i had to motion to Jill to stop her rented scooter and come see what was wrong. what we saw appeared to be the last remaining half of some kind of creature, instead of a large bit of gravel, as i had supposed. i imagined that whatever it was had been hovering in mid-air just waiting for an improperly clad motorbike rider to come by. he had thrust out his tail stinger just like an angry cartoon bee might have done, determined to do the most damage possible if hovering on the highway was going to mean his own demise. which it did: after impact, only half of him was left, but he'd done such an incredible job of embedding that barbed spike in my arm that it took us several minutes to bring it out again without totally tearing up my flesh. and then the swelling started and didn't let up for several days, getting bad enough that i almost took my first trip to a Taiwanese doctor.


the best shot we could get of my most obvious injury from wrecking my bike. a very large and surprisingly not too painful blister from coming off and sliding across the ground.

if we were people looking for a sign, this would have been it, a clear message from the gods that this trip was ill-advised. but we weren't, and merely counted ourselves lucky to be able to carry on. at length we began to climb into the foothills of the enormous mountains that run the length of Taiwan, leaving only a narrow plain to their west for man to till and harvest. at their height the mountains rise over 11,000 feet and can be pretty inhospitable (as we were soon to find), but we came across one group of nuns who appreciated the solitude. much of our time in Taiwan was spent exploring the backcountry to find those buildings that were designed to be hidden or just to blend with nature. as our road wound its way we saw a gleaming white pavilion tucked away on a nearby hillside and felt our way towards it so that we could get some pictures. as we wandered around the grounds we were practically taken into custody (albeit a very hospitable one) by a bald woman in long black robes, who offered us a welcome drink on this incredibly hot day. we were ushered into a small room where we were met at length by another robed woman sporting a crew cut, who spoke some English and asked what we were doing. when she had satisfied herself that we were only tourists she began to show us around the Cheng Yuan Temple, which she told us was a convent for Buddhist nuns like herself. that week, however, the convent was hosting other women from all over Taiwan who had come to stay and live the ascetic life by, among other things, silent meditation and chanting, which they were doing now in a large hall that appeared before our eyes as we rounded a corner of the deceptively large complex. the nun, who was Filipino, told us that she had been there several years but was still struggling with the Chinese language, and was glad to have someone to speak English with, if only for a few moments. she spent some time trying to explain, at my request, the point of being a Buddhist nun, which apparently amounts to being able to free yourself from worldly concerns. i was pretty unconvinced and we parted ways agreeing to disagree, and apparently agreeing to resist the urge to take pictures of their pristine temple, because i can't seem to find any anywhere.

for the moment it seemed our luck was changing and the signs were good, but not too much later i met with my unfortunate accident on a series of switchback turns going higher up the mountain. though a couple of hours into our journey without having made much actual eastward progress, i was encouraged by the weather and the virtual emptiness of the roads and was happily singing to myself over the roar of my 150cc Yamaha engine. i came up for a hairpin to the right which i was planning to take nice and wide, but all of a sudden a large truck came lumbering around the other way. realizing that i would have to correct to a new, tighter path or go straight into the side of this juggernaut, i tried to slow down quickly and reorient myself to the inside line. on the gravelly surface however, my front tire couldn't take the combined braking and turning and slid out from under me, sending the whole bike and i sliding across the road towards the truck that was now stopping. it turned out it was only stopping so that the two guys inside could laugh at the spectacle they had just seen, and soon they sped off again while i was left to pick up my possibly broken bike from an all but abandoned road in the middle of nowhere. Jill was unhurt, riding a good distance back from me, but had been pretty traumatized by seeing me go down. it wasn't really that bad of a wreck, and the bike was ridable but somehow never again felt the same to me. i was very glad of the helmet that took some pretty good scratches while protecting my face from what could have been a nasty road rash, and other than grazed knees and the strange blister i was physically fine.

though we'd just scored one more sign for turning back, the hurt ego went into overdrive and insisted we'd come too far and endured too much to go home at this point, so we rode on to the next town and got cleaned up in a McDonald's before continuing our journey. we were still headed up the Central Cross-island Highway and hadn't gone too much farther when we started to come upon construction work. this mighty sounding road is actually only one lane in each direction, and is built on some pretty hairy terrain, so we could see how there might be some repairs going on. little did we know they were the same ones that had been going on for almost six years! back in 1999, on September 21st, Taiwan experienced one of its worst ever earthquakes, which killed almost 2,500 people and demolished hundreds of structures, including a good chunk of the Central Cross-island Highway. to be fair, we had been warned that it might not have opened yet, but all the good folks that we had asked to check it out for us had politely declined, saying we probably shouldn't be riding all that far anyway. i may digress here and say this was one of the things i found most frustrating about Taiwan, or about Chinese people. we would ask for help to plan our travels, wanting information or maps from websites that were only in Chinese for instance, and our conscript would only help us if what we were planning to do was something she thought we should be doing. this was not something we were used to, and not something i ever got to enjoy, or even see in its probable proper light, of friends looking out for us.

anyway, after this, our third major setback, we had to backtrack and get a map to figure out how to get across the island on even smaller roads. we did so but as we ascended the drizzle began and the temperature dropped, and our bikes started to wheeze as the air got rapidly thinner. the roads got narrower and narrower with steeper drop-offs and more maniacal drivers just dying to pass up the vulnerable bikers. frankly, it was terrifying, and shortly before we reached our first summit i was sure that i was going to have to explain to Jill's parents how i had been the reason she was killed on a treacherous mountain road whose crumbling edges had tumbled into abyss without ever even being marked.


the view from the top: the fading light and thick clouds we were soon to pass through while making our way down the magnificent (and this time very scary) Taroko Gorge.

finally we made it to the top, and feeling like we had passed the worst we enjoyed the magnificent scenery. it had taken us about six hours to come this far, and the sun was thinking about setting beyond the horizon, but we were sure by this point we had made it. we were about halfway there geographically, and the rest was all downhill--surely it could only be a couple more hours. but we met some prescient college students on that summit who told us they were going to where we had come from, Fengyuan. we wished them luck and expected the same of them when we told them we were going the other way, but instead that jarring Taiwanese paternalism came out and they told us to turn around, we'd never make it. naturally, we scoffed at their suggestion, for how could they know of the trials we had already conquered? we parted company slightly annoyed but hopeful still of our good Hualien dinner.

below us lay Taroko Gorge, Taiwan's incredible granite-walled canyon, which we had been looking forward to seeing along all its great length. but the signs once again were against us, as darkness and bitter cold began to set in, and even what sights of the gorge walls we could see weren't enough to keep up our spirits. the light faded quickly and we descended into cloud, rendering our visibility almost nil, which forced us to reduce speed to appropriate levels. thinking of our now-unlikely dinner made hunger rear its disquieting head, which compounded our misery to almost unbearable levels. the roadway through Taroko Gorge suddenly seemed unbearably long, its many twists and turns cruelly keeping us from our destination. we had only a few places to stop and stretch and relieve our straining eyes, as the road was narrow and being plied by large work trucks apparently driven by suicidal maniacs who were oblivious to our presence and plight. at one such stop we used what one could only call a restroom if he were inclined to be particularly generous, as it was little more than a trench in the ground with some plywood separators to form stalls. it was attached to a small store whose existence all the way up there i can't begin to explain, but i'm sure our appearance made the hard lives of those folks pretty entertaining for just a moment.

the next stop was some time later, about 10 hours since departure, after we had finally emerged from the cloud and descended almost to the mouth of the canyon. we pulled off the road and went hunting in our backpacks for the few snacks we had brought, only to find that the bags they were in had burst at high altitude and spread their contents all over our clothes. this finally broke some of the tension that had been steadily building and we laughed as we ate what we could salvage, feeling now that we had all but made it. then we descended into hilarium as Jill related that she was so tired from single-minded focus on the dim road and my brake light that her eyes had begun to play tricks on her. at one point she had thought that a lizard crossing the road in front of her bike had actually been a dinosaur. that one still keeps me laughing.

so, we missed our great dinner and had to settle for yet another McDonald's (it was the only thing still open when we rolled into town after 11pm), which we ate while resting up in that dim hotel. it was a good thing we had already been to Hualien, because the next day we took off again pretty early for the coastal ride down to Taitung (say Taidong). this stretch of single-lane highway is about another hundred or so miles, but with several things to see along the way, among which was this little gem:


i just wish i'd been around to see some of the activities that made them put up this sign.

as i recall, it took about five or six hours to ride this leg of the journey, so we made frequent stops to check out the scenery or just take a rest from the weight of our backpacks. we found this sign, which is unusual mainly for having good English translations, by a creek just off to the side of the highway. i wouldn't think there'd be much left to eat after bombing a fish, but i'd love to meet the guy that got caught trying it. later, about halfway from Hualien to Taitung we took a few minutes to celebrate our crossing of the Tropic of Cancer, which is marked by this very memorable structure:



Jill showing off the unmissable marker for the Tropic of Cancer, which we did actually miss and had to turn around for. clearly it was worth it though. the Tropic itself runs east to west right through that gap in the tower. below, i stand outside one of the many Caves of the Eight Immortals, which are right on the highway just a few kilometers south of the Tropic.



there are several Caves of the Eight Immortals, which have been turned into a large complex for passing tour buses. artifacts found there have revealed that the caves were inhabited in prehistoric times, but more recently they have been used as temples, several of them now housing gaudy religious icons. as you can see from my clothing, even though we were riding at sea level right along the coast on this day, the weather wasn't so great, and the mist that hung over the caves gave them a kind of mystical feel. when we started hiking around the site however, the Taiwanese summer humidity quickly cured us of our windswept riding chills and i started to boil in all that raingear.

though it did give some helpful protection as we started riding again, this time as far down as the Platform of the Three Immortals (anyone sensing a theme here?) halfway between the caves and Taitung. the Platform is really just a small outcropping of rock separated from the mainland by a narrow channel. for some reason the tiny island thus formed is important enough to have one of the coolest bridges in the country (or in any country actually) spanning the strait that leads to it.



the eight-arched footbridge that leads to the Platform of the Three Immortals in Taitung County. the top of each arch is smoothly humped, but the steeper sides have long, sloping steps. it's cool at first but by the sixth arch it's getting pretty annoying to walk over. this spot is popular enough with the many tour buses that ply this coast to warrant a parking lot and several trinket shops, not to mention food stalls, as below:



those delectable treats above are squid on a stick, very popular delicacies in this part of the world, but not something we were ever particularly tempted to try. there are various Pacific fish to either side of the squid, and some kind of roasted shell bug creatures in the near container. needless to say, we didn't try those either. most of the food in Taiwan was not bad, just kind of scary. on the few occasions when i did manage to eat something that my eyes said i shouldn't, i found that the things didn't necessarily taste bad, more like they just didn't belong in my mouth. nevertheless, i do admire the Taiwanese for making use of things i would never dream of eating and that would probably serve no other purpose, and we were able to find several things that we did like. among these was a breakfast dish called dam-bing that is made of egg crepes and bacon and was served at a little place right across the street from of our hotel in Taitung. both times we came to town we ate at this little breakfast shack, and both times we stayed at this hotel. on this trip we stayed for a couple of nights, so we could spend a day visiting Green Island, an hour's ferry journey from Taitung.



the ferry that took us from Taitung to Ludao (Green Island), and Jill and me on that journey, with mainland Taiwan in the background.



originally we had wanted to take a helicopter over to Green Island, but after spending half the morning at Taitung's tiny airport being told that all the guidebooks were wrong and only planes made the trip, we settled for the much cheaper ferry. which worked out well, because the scooter rental places are right next to the harbor, so five minutes after landing we were zipping off to explore the busy tourist island.



Jill and the aptly named Green Island Lighthouse, which is still operational, and below, the more deceptively named Green Island Lodge, once a prison for political dissidents.



the lighthouse was built during the Japanese occupation of the island in the 30s, in response to the wreckage of the American ship President Hoover on a coastal reef. the Green Island Lodge was one of three prisons on the island, which were filled with those who dared speak out against the government of Chiang Kai-shek during his period of "White Terror" in the 1950s. acroos the road from the Lodge is a large and quite pleasant park containing the Human Rights Memorial Monument that commemorates those incarcerated in the prisons. we took a while to relax in the park but skipped the very popular snorkeling and the busy Kuanyin Cave (one of religious significance wherein there is a stalagmite wearing a red cape, to represent the goddess Kuanyin) in favor of the real attraction of Green Island: the Chaojih Hot Springs.


Jill and me in the coolest of the three pools at Chaojih Hot Springs in the south of Green Island. it was still a little too hot for me.

with the East Asian penchant for hot springs, it would be easy to think there's nothing special about Chaojih, but that thinking would be wrong. you see, these three pools on the beachfront are among only three saltwater hot springs in the world. the others are on Mt Vesuvius in Italy and somewhere in Hokkaido, Japan (we tried to figure out where so we could go there when we were in Japan, but nobody down in Nagoya could figure it out). the saltwater is supposed to have even more remarkable healing powers than regular freshwater hot springs, so we gave it a try notwithstanding what i remember to be a rather high entry price.

taking Wednesday off to relax on Green Island was definitely a good idea on this trip, but soon enough we had to be on our way, this time back across the island and up to Tainan. we had to ride about 60 Km (35-40 miles) farther south to get to a road that would cross the island again, but that coastal stretch was one of the most beautiful i've ever seen. there's not much life along there but mountain forests slope down steeply into clear blue ocean, with only space for the road carved out. there are a couple of towns and some beaches but generally it's remarkably unspoiled and the vistas are amazing, and were especially so given the great weather we had that day and the fresh air we could feel as riders.

when we turned to the west to cross the island, we began to climb up into the mountains and were glad for the cool air that accompanied our rise. we weren't so glad to be met by a full scale police roadblock that had been set up by a county force that was obviously bored with little else to do. they could have tried going out and patrolling the road, but chose instead to just divert all traffic on that road through the parking lot of their station for inspection. they didn't seem to want to be bothered trying to understand our "Engrish", so they let us go without even seeing any documents, and we kept on all the way to Kaohsiung (say Gaoshung). the west coast in this area was much less attractive than the east had been, and Kaohsiung, Taiwan's second largest city, gets very industrial on its outer reaches and was distinctly unpleasant to ride into. we ate in town but didn't stay, pressing on to spend the last night of our little tour in Tainan, probably my favorite city in Taiwan.

though not that we had much time to enjoy it this time through, as we took off pretty early for the grueling ride back to Taichung and Fengyuan, all of which was very hot, very dirty and marred by all kinds of roadworks. we even rode through the vast Taichung harbor complex, where we dodged huge dump trucks and got caked by the clouds of industrial dust that stuck easily to our sweaty skin and damp clothes. this last hundred miles or so took another six or more fairly uncomfortable hours, but we were able to look back on one of the most satisfying, if turbulent, trips we had taken to that point. plus, we were so happy to have reaped such huge tax savings that we treated our grimy selves to a good old American hamburger at Chili's in Taichung. then, finally reaching Fengyuan after dark, we turned our minds to the pending trip we were going to take in Southeast Asia. and with that, i'll turn my mind to how to report it here.

thesigns

one of the great things about all our travels has been the chance to be immersed in another language. although we learned precious little of any of them, it is really cool to hear so many unfamiliar sounds and see foreign writing, much of it in our case in totally different scripts. Since it's difficult to give you the sounds of all those languages, i thought i'd at least give you the sights. so far, we've been to Taiwan, where they speak what we usually call "Mandarin" Chinese and Taiwanese; Thailand, where Thai is spoken; Malaysia, where they speak Bahasa Malay and English; Singapore, where English is the administrative language, Malay the national language, and Tamil and Chinese also considered official; Indonesia, where Bahasa Indonesia is spoken; Hong Kong, where it's Cantonese and a lot of English; Macau, where Portuguese and Cantonese are spoken; Mexico, where they speak Spanish; Japan, where Japanese is the order of the day; Mainland China, where they also speak Mandarin, but have changed some of the written characters; Korea, where Korean is spoken; Britain, where real English still generally prevails, along with a bit of various Gaelic tongues, like Cornish, Welsh or Scottish; and France, where the people speak French.



signs of our times, clockwise from top left: French in Paris, English and Chinese in Hong Kong, Welsh and English in Conwy, Wales, Korean in Seoul, Chinese in Beijing, Japanese in Nagoya, Portuguese and Chinese in Macau and Spanish in Puerto Vallarta. in the background is a sign from Georgetown, Malaysia, written in Malay. click the picture to enlarge it. below, some Thai script seen outside a government building in Bangkok.



the longer we spent in a place, the more familiar its language became; we got to the point in Taiwan and Japan where we could read and understand a few things, though generally Chinese and Japanese are still alien to us. good thing you can almost always find someone who speaks some English and wants to practice, even in the most remote corners of the world.

thepack-o

who'd have thought Taiwan was so multicultural? while there we made friends with many folks from faraway places, including, of all things, a wee Spanish fellow by the name of Paco. we came across him on one of our 'round island trips, soaked to the bone from the torrential summer rains, and bought him one of the $1 ponchos from a 7-11. then i gave him a lift--literally--to the train station in Tainan before saying farewell.

Taiwan was full of memories great and small, and Jill and i couldn't let our brief association with little Paco pass without a little photographic documentation. i hope you will enjoy this memory as much as we do.


Paco 'n me

theletter

something else i've been meaning to post for a while: one of the letters i received from my students before i left Taiwan. this one is undoubtedly the best, for reasons you will see for yourself. though i have done my best at recreating the feel of the actual letter, including the creative spelling and grammar, you will unfortunately miss much of the impact that the cute stationary and numerous little hand-drawn pictures bring to the piece.

Dear proffessor ball: I'm Sherry Duo I'm Sandy Lu. Can you don't tiggle us! We hate it! Can you give us your picture and e-mail and adress. When you go back to England we will miss you! really............ Don't be like girls.... we hate you like this! (this is a warning) Can you don't give us so many homeworks, please.... >:< (this is seriou)s, You are not very handsome! but we think you are a good teacher, (exapt when you make we mad). We are free to be mad, and don't make we laugh when we are mad! >:<.......,   this letter didn't have using any grammer, sorry! We always shout to you! (sorry) Can you think more ""fun"" game for us. we like to play game with you, but your game always is bord! And can I ask you a question? why we always need to give you [picture of a hand] (5)! <- we didn't hate give you ""5""! we just what to ask!   we think you are a good teacher! You teach we many thing. thank you. I'm glad you are my teacher in Berhan. You did your job great! Don't --> forgot --> --> don't --> tiggle --> us ! This letter is give you some warning and we are sorry to you Don't always threaten us, like you need to do your thing finish or you can't have a break>. you are responsible teacher! You are a good teacher Your smart student = [signed] Sherry Duo Sandy Lu

thanks to Sherry and Sandy for providing this great memory, and a good insight into what i was listening to for six months.

theshow

i've been meaning to write this post for ages: it documents what is pretty much the first major event i attended while in Taiwan. indeed, many of you will be shocked to know that i paid a full $800 for the ticket to this event, but i thought it well worth the price.

having only been in-country for a few days, someone who was to become a great friend, Leah Schwenke, asked the newbie teachers if we were interested in attending a flamenco show in Taichung. partly because i was interested in flamenco, but maybe more because it seemed, even in those early days, like such a strange event to be having in Taiwan, i decided to go. it was a show named Los Tarantos performed by the Jose Greco II dance troupe. Jose Greco II is, surprisingly enough, the son of Jose Greco, who was apparently quite legendary as a flamenco dancer. by all accounts Junior has acquitted himself quite well over the years too.

i'll leave the interested reader to check out the particulars of the show in this fairly comprehensive article from the Taipei Times, one of Taiwan's English-language dailies, while i tell you the more entertaining story from that night. it was the first of many, many times that i employed the now-signature strategy that involves a shrug and a apologetic look that says "i don't speak, read or otherwise understand any Chinese, so i'm pretty much going to ignore you and do whatever i want." it's a wonderful strategy if you happen to be in China, by the way, and you want to do something that doesn't seem like it would be allowed. they don't seem to know what to do with people who won't do as they're told.

anyway, the show was good, but i felt we needed more; like an audience with the master, for example. so upon descending to the lobby i began to look for a way backstage. seeing a staircase with a velvet rope and a sign that said something like "employees only" across it, i felt like we had a good candidate. you may say that the rope and English sign were pretty good indicators that we weren't supposed to go down that staircase, but the others agreed with me that because we didn't speak Chinese, it was okay. and since the Chinese friend that was with us hadn't quite achieved native level English, she could hardly be blamed for ignoring the sign. so we went, and given our conspicuous appearance, we felt justified in our course of action when nobody even attempted to stop us.

we finally got down into a garage which appeared to be directly beneath the stage, and in which the tour buses were sitting, inert and silent. none of the drivers seemed to mind that we were wandering around, so we searched until we found a staircase on the far side which led us up four or five flights, until we heard noise. we had found the dressing rooms. so far unhindered by any discernible security, we now began to wonder if this was all a little invasive, given that several performers seemed to be dashing about in various states of semi-dress. any ideas of turning back were squelched, however, when one of the performers approached us from behind and asked, in quite good English, what we were doing. our struggles for a good answer were thankfully aborted when the man himself showed up just seconds later, seeming so happy to be able to entertain some fans for a moment that all the tension vanished.

we talked with him for 10 or 15 minutes, during which time we learned he actually lives in Texas, though he is a native of Spain. after snapping a few pictures with him (the one below is courtesy of Ginger, a fellow teacher), we let him take his leave and went outside, where we met some of the other performers as they were getting on their now-running bus.

so it was a pretty good evening after all, and well worth the $800, like i said. that language doesn't have to be a barrier, but can even be a distinct stepping-stone, is a lesson at least that valuable.


a few of the English(ish) folks backstage at the flamenco show of Jose Greco II in Taichung. from left: a friend of Leah's; Leah; Greco, the man himself; Ginger; me; Melissa and in front, a very tired-looking dancer from Jose's show.

ps: 800 New Taiwan Dollars is around 25 of the ol' American ones.

thememories

since returning to the United States, thejayfather has been busy inroducing Americanos to Taiwan's ubiquitous phenomenon of "Chinglish", the best attempts of the Chinese to translate their language into English. one fine example is on the cover of a small notebook i have, which reads: "It's nice, this shop. Located in your town. We inform only the important shopping information. The key to shopping is gentless and quality. Have more wonderful time here to keep your mind calm." huh?

but that's not nearly the worst of it, the best Chinglish tends to be on clothing. in a special treat for you, faithful reader, thejayfather brings you a picture of just such a garment; ask yourself, who would let their child come to school wearing this:


possibly the best Chinglish ever, though i'm not even sure what this was supposed to say.

thehaircut

so it happened. just over two weeks ago i let the little hooligans in my Basic Reading class do the unthinkable to my beautiful locks. there's not much to say about it, except i'm enjoying a whole new level of air conditioning about my cranium. enjoy the pictures:



in the beginning there was some hair, but tiny Tina (who was recently cropped herself) wanted to change all that. so Miss Jill generously volunteered her services to help the class members, like Mr King Li here:



please note that this was all very educational: in the first picture you will see a book entitled "How To Give a Haircut" that our class had recently made. this education is becoming a habit; though we made no book i did allow the little dears to wash my motorcycle the other day...



here you can just about see Miss Nancy Chang in the mirror, enjoying herself very much, though perhaps not as much as Miss Jill, who apparently has a thing for mullets, and made the class cut me one before they got to the real business.



speaking of business, we see here again that language learning was incorporated. how many Chinese kids do you think know what a mullet is, even though half of their countrymen sport one? and how else do you talk about "business" with eight year-olds, if not to explain to them that a mullet is "business in the front, party in the back"?


this is Gloria Yo, the head secretary, evidently getting into the mullet thing a bit too much.

soon though, we come to the final product:



witness the sheer volume of hair in that not-at-all-trivially sized garbage can, and above all, the smiles on those kids' faces.

thelake

for some time, we had been planning a visit to the famous Sun Moon Lake, one of Taiwan's major tourist attractions. it is the largest body of fresh water in Taiwan, and rests among the mountaintops just South of Puli, near the geographical center of the island. the last two or three weekend trips chronicled here were backup activities when the weather foiled our plans for visiting thelake.

this day, however, proved to have glorious weather, allowing us to ride up, as planned, rather than taking another awful bus. it was quite a long day in the saddle, which got rather uncomfortable over the course of about 250Km, but it gave us plenty of time to work on our tans. actually, after that amount of time spent riding, all i can say is thank goodness for sunscreen or i'd still be in pain three weeks later.

there's not really that much to say about 日月潭, Ji Yue Tan (say Zhuh Yuay Tan); it's pretty much as you'd expect for a lake. it would be quite picturesque if it weren't for all the crappy Taiwanese buildings all around it. for some reason the actual attraction for the Taiwanese people at any tourist spot seems to be food, so the couple of villages around the edge of the lake are littered with food places, convenience stores and a few hotels--all with restaurants, of course.

okay, there are other buildings; the temples that are ubiquitous in Taiwan have made it to the shores of Sun Moon Lake too. frankly though, Chinese temples have long been old news--they all look roughly the same, they all indulge in architectural and decorative excess, and they all stink. that's because they're full of burning incense, by the way. even though these structures are getting a little tiresome, along with the pagodas that sometimes accompany them, Sun Moon Lake is home to one of the most impressive pagodas on the island, if not for the structure itself, then for its grounds.



the Ci En (say Tsi Ahn) Pagoda, and the same pagoda with a drum that was being violently beaten by this monk only seconds before this picture was taken.



the Ci En Pagoda was built by Chiang Kai-shek to honor his mother, Madam Wang. it reaches 48 meters from the summit of Sha Ba Lan Mountain to hit 1000m above sea level at its peak. inside it felt a lot more solidly built than the one we had climbed in Taroko Gorge, but it was the grounds that made this one really impressive. we ascended the 570m staircase that leads to the temple just as the sun was vanishing behind rapidly descending clouds. reaching the top of the stairs there was an eerie quiet that was reinforced by the fog and numerous tall cypresses, and we were greeted by a thick carpet of tiny white stones. it was quite like something out of a Chinese Kung-Fu movie like Hero or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. hopefully the pictures will give you some sense of this spectacle, but you will unfortunately not be able to experience the tranquility of those moments we enjoyed before loud Chinese tourists arrived and shattered the silence. even the bell-ringing, chanting and drum-beating of the monks somehow added to the peaceful atmosphere.

before we had scaled the heights of Ci An, we had participated in a more traditional type of lake entertainment: rowing. there are powerboats, lots of them, that will take you around the lake or to the tiny island in the middle, but we favored the old school approach. there were several Taiwanese people who had gone this route as well, though frankly they all looked as though they were struggling with the rowing action. in the hour we had the boat we went about eight times faster and further than any of the other folks that rented at the same time as us. i guess the Taiwanese suffer in many of their watersports for only having one decent lake, but it is an small island surrounded by water; what's the deal folks? how come you don't know how to row?



a Taiwanese man doing his best rowing impression, with a temple in the background, and then a purely gratuitous shot of me rowing. enjoy that one.



so it wasn't the best equipment, but it was fun. in the hour we got almost all the way to the aforementioned island and back, and got to enjoy the cool emerald green water of the lake. unlike most things in Taiwan, it seemed fairly clean, if not clear, and we reasoned that this was because they don't let people swim in the lake. There is apparently one day in September, i think, that there is an officially sanctioned cross-lake swim, which is supposed to draw quite large crowds, but for a few moments i was pretty tempted to hop over the side of our boat and have an illicit dip.

so if you come to Taiwan, Sun Moon Lake is one of those obligatory sights that you have to see, and on balance i would say it is worth it. it's a bit of a pain to get to, and it's really not the most spectacular thing i've ever seen by any stretch, but it is one of Taiwan's nicer spots. Like much of rural Taiwan, it is surrounded by what feels like unmitigated tropical rainforest. climbing up to the pagoda we were almost deafened by the otherworldly screams of numerous tropical animals that, though they sounded only inches away, remained undetectable. though it's not difficult to have this kind of experience in Taiwan, having it at Sun Moon Lake is the total package: the sights, the sounds, and the wind, water, earth and sky that are so important to the Chinese.


the striking effect of the famous Sun Moon Lake sun, which only adds to the ambiance of this beautiful place.

thecapital

going to Tainan had actually been a backup plan for going to Sun Moon Lake, one of the great natural wonders of Taiwan. the weather had been so bad on that morning that we opted for plan B instead, only to find it turn into a nice day halfway down to Tainan. pretty much the same happened the next weekend, when plan B was to go to Taipei, only this time the weather never did really clear up.

which wasn't such a bad thing, as it turned out, as we were able to get these rather nifty contrast photos of the Taipei 101 building at a distance. it gives you a better sense of the size of the thing, and knowing that the shots were taken only five minutes apart helps you realize how variable the weather is here.



the world's tallest building, the Taipei 101, in the dead center of the picture above. these shots were taken about five minutes apart, which shows how fast the weather changes here, and they give a good sense of just how tall the building is, dwarfing everything else in sight.



just to the left of the 101 in these pictures is Taipei's city park, which looks to be quite big, running along the South bank of the Keelung (say Gee-long, with a hard g) River. the more impressive sight though, rising from the flats of this nice refrain from urban sprawl, is the Keelung bridge, pictured below. there are a lot of rivers in Taipei, and so a lot of bridges, many of which approximate this design. a couple are even lit up at night, but this is the largest and most impressive of the genre--that i've seen at least.


the reasonably elegant Keelung bridge. the supporting arch's reflection in the river below looks almost like it could be a rainbow.

these pictures were taken from one of Taipei's most famous buildings, a very impressive example of Chinese-style architecture. our objective in going to Taipei had been to finish up all the souvenir shopping for folks back home like you, which we did, and to see the few remaining unmissable sights of the capital. one of them is the Grand Hotel, so named for obvious reasons. it really is quite big, if a little boxy, but the inside is quite plush, as i hope the picture of the grand staircase will demonstrate.



the aptly named Grand Hotel, and its equally grand staircase.



and it was here, in one of the Grand's many souvenir shops, that i finally found the holy grail of gifts: the thimble for mother. most ornamental thimbles are made of china, which might lead you to believe they originated in China. if they did, i'm here to tell you that they don't live here anymore. i've looked exhaustively in every place i've ever been over here for those crazy thimbles, and they had just about driven me crazy when i heeded the siren song of a knick-knack lady and entered her souvenir mecca. i was so happy to find the thimbles, which are metal, by the way, that i bought two, and a soapstone dragon sculpture to boot. so rest easy mother, your gifts are assured.

the next thing that happened to us was almost equally sublime. you may remember that it's a little difficult to get Chinese people to understand what you say (see thecircumnavigation), should you venture to use their vaunted tongue. the day we went to Taipei marked the first time i had ever been understood saying something more important than ordering an ice cream cone. we were on a tight schedule to get the the famous Martyr's Shrine, which is just down the street from the Grand, and we decided to take a taxi. getting in i confidently told the man: "Zhong-lie Ci" (say Jhong-lieh Tsuh, obviously), and then began searching for the Chinese characters written in my guidebook as the driver started to say "Wha...?" but he paused halfway through his interrogatory, the light switches just turned on, and said "Zhong-lie Ci?" with a certain air of triumph that i had felt belonged to me. "Dway," i said, concurring heartily in my new language, "dway dway dway."


the Taipei Martyr's Shrine, or Zhong-lie Ci, and its rather dramatic surroundings.

anyway the Martyr's Shrine, or Zhong-lie Ci, if you, like me, prefer, was pretty much as we'd expected after having seen the one in Taichung, though a bit more impressive. the great thing was that we got there just minutes before they began their changing of the guard ceremony, which is kind of interesting, if absurd. i believe i have detailed my impressions of the Taiwanese military in ceremony before; this was pretty much the same scene, if a little longer. as you can see from the picture, there are three lines etched into the concrete of the courtyard area; they got there from the many years of soldiers marching (very slowly) the entire length of the courtyard, two times for each of the hourly guard-changing ceremonies. the whole thing takes about fifteen minutes.


thejayfather as a Taiwanese soldier. in case you're busy revising your notions about the height of Chinese men, at least consider that these men each have about a three inch lift in their boots to hide their jingly metal bits. but these guys were taller than average, and also walked in a manner not easily imitated.

as you can see, they don't seem to mind others getting in on the act. the walk they do is kind of interesting, and quite difficult to do right; all very drill team. they even have these little metal rings on the bottom of their boots, which jingle together every time they stomp their feet down, and which are probably responsible for most of the concrete discoloration.


steadily standing guard. mostly.

finally, before taking off to get the remaining souvenirs, we took a little pic with one of the newly situated guards. before they get settled on their boxes, they have a guy that comes around and ensures their pants are still properly creased, their jackets are sitting prettily, and the tassels on their guns are falling just so. i have to say that the guards do a fairly good job of remaining stock-still for a long time, and it's not something i would ever care to have to do, but i found it kind of funny that our guy visible leaned away from Jill when she walked into position for this shot. i've seen the guards at Buckingham Palace, and i sort of felt that this flawed attempt at BP re-creation epitomizes why Taiwan is not considered one of the world's cultural hubs. but their soldiers sure do dance better.

thecontest

thejayfather knows that at least one person back in theStates has been keeping very close tabs on the hair situation. it's been about six months since my last cut, and it's really showing; i had thought that i might be able to get longer hair to do something cool eventually, but it's just not happening. and now it's just annoying. but not one to let language teaching opportunities slip away, i have turned this problem into an activity for my students: thehaircut contest.

of course there is a selfish side. with the end of the semester rapidly approaching, and the warm weather here to stay, the natives are getting restless and thejayfather is getting sick of their crap. so basically it's a behavior contest between three of my classes, with the best behaved class--determined on a strictly subjective basis, of course--getting to use my clippers to shave all my hair off in a couple of weeks. the other classes will have to make do with the photos.

and so, unfortunately, will you, dear reader. below is a rather fitting pic to clue you in to the extent of my hair problem, and to keep you going until the results of thecontest are announced.

and non't do nothing else we nouldn't like, neither.

thehistory

thejayfather has been a bit busy lately and the sweet bloggy blog has suffered somewhat. apologies. but there's a lot of catching up to do, what with three weekends and a speech contest unaccounted for, so we'd better get started rather than crying over spilt milk.

a couple of weeks ago we went to Tainan, the city whose name literally means "Taiwan South". it is South of here, and i would say it's in the southern half of the island, but it's not the southern-most city by a long shot. it is the fourth-largest however, and certainly one of the oldest. Tainan is known for it's historic places and for having more temples than just about anywhere else. at this point however, i'm about templed out. when i say these things are everywhere, i really mean everywhere; i try to appreciate their cultural value but they're all much the same anymore.



about a third of the Shengmu Temple in Tainan, and the main, middle section



good thing Tainan does it better. apparently, there are a few warring factions down there who all seek to build the largest temple. i have read that there are three which tend to swap the title depending on which group can raise the most cash. the one currently in the lead, and so the one we visited, was the Shengmu Temple, in the Luerhmen district North of town. having said what i did about temples, i can't let on to being too impressed by this one, but it was rather amazing, if for no other reason than it didn't seem to serve a purpose. at least not a purpose a much smaller building couldn't have served. it's size did allow me to ride through almost the entire thing without ever getting off my rented scooter, and i think you'll agree that there's a lot to be said for drive-through worshipping.



and the last third of the Shengmu Temple in Tainan, with a billboard depicting yet further building plans for the future. it looks like they will wall in and gate the temple

the thing was so large we couldn't fit it in one picture, so above are three. below you'll find a shot of one of the large lagoons separating the sections of the shrine, and one of the many marble etchings on the outer walls; owing to the newness and lavishness of much of this building, it has many features other temples have let lapse into decay or have simply gone without.



a view of one of the lagoons at the Shengmu Temple in Tainan, and one of the many ornate marble friezes on its side



Tainan really does have some history. it was the capital of Taiwan from 1624, when the Dutch invaded and set up their headquarters there, to 1661, at which time they were expelled by a Ming dynasty loyalist known to the West as Koxinga. on our way back towards town from the monolithic temple area, we swung by the old Anping Fort, or Fort Zeelandia as the Dutch called it. since it was only a few minutes to closing and they wouldn't cut us a discount on the admission, we decided to forego the formal tour, but it looked pretty much like a fort, on a little hill and all that. then we stopped by the whimsically named Eternal Castle, which was built by French engineers in 1875. all that remains of this castle is a small gate, a moat, and some cannons; whether this is because it was built by the French or because it was so presumptuously named is not clear, however.

the castle had nothing to do with Koxinga, of course, but the good people of Tainan have adopted him as a sort of patron saint. way North of town is said to be a memorial site marking his landing to expel the Dutch, and right in the center of town is a large shrine to him in the mould of most temples erected to deities. though it was well after closing when we got there, the whole place was well kept up and enjoyed some nice grounds.



entrance to the Koxinga shrine in Tainan and me, Jill, Jacquie and Michelle on a bridge on the grounds



all in all Tainan seemed to be the quintessential Taiwanese city, without being so Taiwanese (read filthy) as to be offputting. returning to the train station late Saturday night we passed through a large park with a huge pavilion set in the middle of a lake. the pavilion, as well as the walkways to it on either side, were held up on stilts, and the whole scene was very picturesque. it appeared to be very much typical of what people imagine China and Taiwan to be like, though this was the first time we'd even seen a structure like that.

i'm sure that if i had seen it earlier in my stay i wouldn't be able to say that Tainan is the best Taiwanese city, but since i've seen all the big ones i feel qualified to make that call. as we were riding back along the nice new highway that connects the historical district to town, the sun shining brightly on a skyline that is neither to busy nor too empty, passing the ocean and somewhat normal looking homes, it seemed like the most Western of all the places we've been so far, vaguely reminiscent of San Diego. Tainan is even rumored to have a Chinatown, and if i can confirm that on my next trip there, then its exalted status will be confirmed. a Chinatown in China. perfect.

thestorm

welcome to the rainy season. though it rains quite a bit in Taiwan, the last few weeks have given us more precipitation than we have had the rest of our time here put together. i'm told that most summer rains come in the afternoon, in short-lived thunderstorms, but on Thursday night we experienced the exception to that rule.


lightning

the sky was clouded over, and the lightning diffused in amber-pink hues across it, often in flashes so bright as to be temporarily blinding; this around midnight. i threw open the large window in my room and watched entranced, even as rain dripped onto the floor--the frosted glass would have distorted my view, and it was a nice way to cool things down. the storm lasted until well after i had fallen asleep a few hours later, and with thunderclaps as booming and earthshaking as came with it, it goes down as the second most intense weather-related experience of my life.

the first, of course, was the hurricane which caused us to be stuck in Samoa and which provided me with a free trip to New Zealand at the beginning of last year. known as Tropical Cyclone Heta, it battered the Samoan islands along with several others in the South Pacific, and caused near-famine conditions for about the first six months of 2004. the satellite image taken by NASA shows the storm on January 6, after it had passed Samoa and just before it was to collide head-on with Niue. compare the size of the storm's eye to that of the island, which is about one and a half times the size of Washington, DC, and you get some idea of the tremendous power nature possesses.

weather i am glad not to have experienced was the tsunami of Boxing Day 2004, which hit much of Southeast Asia and claimed the lives of thousands. this website contains an interesting graphic, near the top of the page, showing the path of the tsunami; near the bottom of the page are some amazing satellite photographs of the northern tip of Indonesia's Aceh province, probably the worst hit area anywhere, both before and after the wave. the contrast is hard to fathom; all that destruction looks more like what you'd imagine a bomb would do, rather than a wave. once again, however, the natural world helps to keep us humble.

thebackyard

three Sundays ago we had Stake Conference in the morning, and so the afternoon was free for once. not that i'm complaining about getting to sleep in on Sundays. it seemed as if we'd done a bunch of exploring over the whole island, but not much right here in our own backyard, so we set out to rectify that situation.

putting theYammy to work, we headed from Feng Yuan towards Taichung on a country road that runs along the foothills of the nearby mountains. we took a promising-looking road off toward the mountains and were not disappointed by the knowledge we eventually gained up there. at first we took a road that became a lane, that became a path, that became dirt the farther up we went, and the strange looks we received increased in frequency commensurate with the altitude. when an old lady took the time to jabber at us in the language of the Middle Kingdom, despite my pleas for "ing wen", we decided to turn back and find less forbidding trails.


i guess they ran out of money?

what we found was this strange creature, which looks like it was intended to be a fairly impressive temple. in what i assume was the absence of funds, they appear to have settled for a single room of templeness; no matter, there was only one guy anywhere near it. they haven't seemed to embrace the maxim of location, location, location when it comes to building temples here. but the austerity of the place will likely go largely unnoticed: taking a ride northwards the other night i came across the trappings of a temple housed in a sheet metal shack with a billboard painting of a temple roof above it.

the next temple we came to was a bit more impressive, especially for its rather liberal attitude toward creeds and beliefs. most people here tend to follow a queer sort of folk religion, which is a mix of Taoist and Buddhist thought with a healthy dose of Confucianism underpinning the whole system. they worship when they want, and at any one of a bewildering array of temples, which often have a Buddhist section and a Taoist section. many have the idol deities from the different religions side by side, as was the case at the temple pictured below, though this one went a little beyond the traditional norm.


Jesus even gets into the Buddhist/Taoist/Confucian temples

with the abundance of temples, one is quickly inured to the profusion of icons in them, but i admit to being more than a little surprised to see that even Jesus had infiltrated the Far East folk-religious consciousness too. not that Jesus isn't big here; he is, and getting bigger. as you might imagine though, the hard part of converting Chinese to Christianity is not the getting them to accept Christ, but the getting them to abandon other practices that Christianity often requires.


Woo-Hoo (five lakes) Pagoda (crematorium)

one of the next places we went was right next to this fairly magnificent building, the Woo-Hoo (say Oo-Who, five lakes) Pagoda. both buildings are actually repositories for the cremated remains of the faithful departed who are, in the case of the building not pictured (their architecture is much less attractive), Catholics, and Buddhists in the pagoda.


where they keep what's left of Buddhists

it's a seven storey building and though we turned up about five minutes before they were supposed to close, we met a Chinese-American man who took us on a fairly grand tour. i was surprised to learn from Mr Moon Chen that to have your remains kept at Woo-Hoo, you need only pay a one-time fee, which at something like NT$24,000 (US$800) seemed like a bit of a steal. the economist in me wondered how this business model could be made to sustain itself, but it seemed like a question more appropriate to leave unasked.

Mr Moon Chen giving me the skinny, and the view from the top

still, Mr Chen did a wonderful job of answering questions and providing interesting information on both Woo-Hoo and Taiwan, even though he himself was only visiting. he took us up to the seventh floor where we got out onto the balcony and admired the 360-degree view, which even with Taiwan's permasmog was fairly impressive. and it was nice to see the geographical relationship between our city, Feng Yuan, and our much larger neighbour, Taichung.

we also spied our next bit of adventure from the top of Woo-Hoo: the local cemetery. since Sunday is a day of rest, i suppose it's appropriate that the theme of the day became permanent resting, though it was unintentional. among all the other figures the Chinese worship are the ancestors, so burial is very important. there is even a yearly national holiday known as Tomb Sweeping Day, which fell in early April, during thecircumnavigation.


some typical burial plots

though this holiday had been not three weeks earlier, most of the tombs we visited looked like they could have used a good sweeping, though many also looked to be inaccessible other than by climbing numerous walls and other tombs. some of the newer tombs look very nice, and their landscaping makes them vaguely reminiscent of sand traps on a golf course, but i'm sure in time they'll succumb to the ravages of overactive flora in such a humid place. many of the tombs are so overgrown that the only tool sufficient to clean them is fire, rather than a feeble broom. its not unusual to see parts of the hillside on fire, but then what's a little more smoke in a country where they'll burn stacks of paper "ghost money" in the streets outside temples?

in all, the local trip was very valuable for gaining a little perspective on what the Taiwanese find important. issues of life and death are very close to them, as you'd expect with a group so preoccupied with their ancestors. but while we find the Taiwanese very backward about coming forward in everyday affairs, it's a bit funny that the one subject we try so hard to avoid is on ever-present display here.