theyammy

for some time now i've been meaning to get a picture of the iron horse up here for everyone to admire. though this isn't the ideal shot of my sweet ride, you can get an idea for the basics. it's several years old but only has about 20,000 kilometers on the clock (12,000 miles), and it performs well with little maintenance. it does have a "V-twin" engine, a la Harley Davidson, but with a displacement of just 150cc it sounds more like a screaming banshee than any rolling thunder. the upside here is that i spend about US$3 a week keeping the thing gassed up, and i'm reliably informed that such economy would be hard to come by in the States these days. i've thought about having it shipped back, but it would be hard to justify spending more on shipping than i did on the bike itself.


Yammy 'n me, out for a country drive

but it's important to remember that there really aren't any Harley Davidsons out here. the biggest other thing on the road is a 125cc scooter, but there are a lot of them. they are used for absolutely everything, from commercial freight and delivery vehicles to hot date mobiles, but perhaps the most common purpose is as shown below: family sedan.


the family sedan. notice little Jimmy in the "jump seat" up front

this is the most people i've ever seen riding on a scooter at the same time (five), but i'm told they will get six or more on sometimes. it really is peculiar, and nobody, even the friendly local cop, seems to mind. though i already found that the police aren't too worried about most traffic infractions. nevertheless, more ubiquitous than mobile phones, scooters are the engines of the economy here, and you see everyone from hot rodding youths and deliverymen to high powered businessmen zipping around on them. they drive them on the streets, on the sidewalks, and even into stores sometimes. if you can physically do it, then it seems to be implicitly allowed by law. somewhat paradoxically, this fact actually made it easier to learn how to ride the bike. during the time that all my energy was focused on changing gears and manipulating the bike, i really didn't have to worry about obeying any traffic rules. it was quite liberating. and though traffic is far more orderly in the States, i feel safer riding here than i would there, because here people are at least expecting two-wheeled vehicles to be everywhere they want to go.

yet even having quickly mastered the concepts of Taiwanese driving, i have decided to work on becoming a bit more street legal. not necessarily because i feel an overwhelming need to obey laws that nobody else does, but because i think having a Taiwanese drivers' license will be a cool souvenir. i have a Samoan one, albeit temporary, and i should get this one--the real deal--just in time for leaving the country. i went to get the drivers', or rather riders', handbook a couple of days ago, and i must quote a few of the sample test questions, they're gems:

from the "Driver's Morals and Knowledge of Traffic Safety" multiple choice section:

26. When you start to feel tired and sleepy on the way, what should you do?
(1) Go on riding.
(2) Take or rub on some refreshments of fostering spirit then go on riding.
(3) Stop at the nearest appropriate place, get off and take a rest then ride on after you do not feel tired.

48. How does a rider think about his clothes and appearance?
(1) He is free about them.
(2) He can wear slippers.
(3) He should be clean and tidy.

from the "Driver's Morals and Knowledge of Traffic Safety" true or false section:

2. We can obey the rule of having priority to give way to pedestrians. That is driving morals.

10. Casually honking the horn makes noise pollution. It is not moral.

11. A riders without traffic morals is a misfortune both for himself and others.

from the "First Aid Theory and Skills" multiple choice section:

3. If a car catches fire by collision, the people in the car will
(1) be in shock.
(2) suffocate.
(3) vomit, due to lack of oxygen or being stuck in the windpipe.

so it's anybody's guess how a fire would cause a person to be stuck in their own windpipe, but it wouldn't really surprise me; strange things do happen in Taiwan. believe me, they really do.

theglossary

thejayfather believes in education. let me share some of mine with you, in the form of some of the Chinese i've been learning. below is a table that consists of some of the characters I have learned simply by their being commonly used or highly useful. in the left column is the character itself, the middle is the Pinyin, or Romanization of that character (not always done the standard way, many are my version of what the character should sound like) and the final column gives a rough translation. if your computer is having a hard time rendering the characters, and just gives little boxes or symbols, you will need to download Chinese text display support.

some Chinese characters i've learned to decipher

character	Pinyin	meaning
台	tai	Taiwan
中	zhong	middle
北	bei	North
東	dong	East
南	nan	South
西	hsi	West
市	suh	city
心	shin	heart
水	shuei	water
國	gwo	country
好	hao	good
不	boo	not/no
大	da	big
小	syao	small
人	ren	people
元	yuen	currency unit
分	fun	point (also minute--time)
可	cuh	allow
山	shan	mountain
口	ko	mouth
林	ling	forest (a common surname)
時	hsiuh	time
合	huh	joins things together
亞	ya	Asia
門	mun	gate
一	ee	one
二	er	two
三	san	three
四	tsu	four
五	oo	five
六	lyo	six
七	chee	seven
八	ba	eight
九	jyo	nine
十	shir	ten

after these basics, i think we're ready for some more involved words, which are often composed of more than one character. most of the following are compounds of the above characters, though some are just for the sake of curiosity. the way that characters go together to form words has a bizarre sort of intuitiveness about it; it's quite interesting. behold:

some words made from more than one character

characters	pronunciations	meanings	translation
台湾	Tai-wan	Taiwan wan	name of the country
台中	Tai-zhong	Taiwan middle	central city of Taiwan
台北	Tai-bei	Taiwan North	Northern and capital city of Taiwan
台東	Tai-dong	Taiwan East	Eastern city of Taiwan
台南	Tai-nan	Taiwan South	Southern city of Taiwan
台北市	Tai-bei-suh	Taiwan North city	Northern city of Taiwan
中心	zhong-shin	middle heart	center
台北市中心	Tai-bei-suh-zhong-shin	Taiwan North city middle heart	Taipei city center
豐原	Feng-Yuen	fertile plain	the city in which i live
高雄	Kao-Hsiung	high (name)	the major city of the South
中國	Zhong-gwo	middle country	China
中國人	Zhong-gwo-ren	middle country people	Chinese person
美國	Mei-gwo	beautiful country	America
美國人	Mei-gwo-ren	beautiful country people	American
英國	Ing-gwo	England country	England
英國人	Ing-gwo-ren	England country people	English person
中文	Zhong-wen	middle language	Chinese
英文	Ing-wen	England language	English
入口	roo-ko	to go in mouth	entrance
出口	tsuh-ko	to go out mouth	exit
小時	syao-hsiuh	small time	hour
公尺	gong-tsuh	(measurement word) (likewise)	meter
公分	gong-fun	(measurement word) point	centimeter
公司	gong-hsuh	(measurement word) (unknown)	office
大小	da-syao	big small	size
東西	dong-hsi	East West	thing
可口可樂	cuh-ko-cuh-le	allow mouth allow happy	Coca-Cola (a transliteration)
摩門	mor-mun	friction gate	Mormon (a transliteration)

most of the Romanizations and translations here are mine, so please forgive any mistakes. also let me know if you have persistent trouble viewing the characters, and i'll see what i can recommend. the main thing is to download a Chinese character font and save it in your Windows font file. if the one i linked to doesn't work for you, see if Microsoft can help you figure it out, or go to the Fonts folder in your Windows Control Panel and choose "Install New Font" from the File menu.

theschooltrip

around the time of thecircumnavigation thejayfather was a busy boy. the weekend after that journey was the school trip to, among other places, the geographical center of the island. so over the course of two weekends i really felt like i saw it all.

on Saturday the 9th we left the school and headed to a little town called either Chichi or Jiji, depending on which sign you were looking at. Chinese Romanizations never seem to work out quite right, but if you can cross these two names, you pretty much have the sound. it seemed as if the whole purpose of this town was to rent very small motorcycles, which we did, along with every Taiwanese person who was there. it's a very strange concept that they have: they figure it would be fun to have some of these little bikes for the tourists, and then instead of getting them in other tourist towns, everybody opens a mini-bike shop right in Jiji, and you can't find them anywhere else.


those westerners don't half ride funny...

at least we got some of the bikes, and we discovered how much fun they could be, finding an open area of blacktop on which to race and do all kinds of other stunts, as shown. the trouble was, we were riding them so hard on the blacktop that when we finally went out to see the mountain sights, the batteries on two of our machines died and we had to tow them all the way back to the shop in town. my arm still hurts.


and don't we know it. this is much harder than it looks, by the way

we went up to some campsite seemingly in the middle of nowhere after that, but i assume it was somewhere in Nantou, or at least Nantou County. we were there for a disproportionate amount of time, mostly sitting around getting eaten by bugs after our barbecue, but our accommodations were nice. like little condos complete with TV and AC, and one of the most spacious bathrooms i've ever seen. actually bathrooms are one thing you have little cause to complain about here. apparently, according to the rules of geomancy, or Feng Shui, as it is more trendily known in the states, it is important to have a large bathroom and the smallest kitchen imaginable. if you can just about turn around once you get in the kitchen, that is admirable, but probably an indicator that the room is still too big. this is directly opposite to the Western way, where the kitchen is usually the most important room in the house, and rightly so, though i certainly like the big bathroom. but it does have its drawbacks. few are the bathrooms in this or any other Southeast Asian country that sport our common or garden variety commode; rather, the potty of choice is a squatty, and i'll leave the specifics of that to your imagination, and perhaps a picture. it's said that this variety of toilet is better for the bowels, but let me assure you it does nothing for the legs. add to this the need to place toilet paper in a trashcan, rather than flushing it, and you end up with a thoroughly miserable experience, which in turn makes all that extra space quite useless. why put a library somewhere you would never be able to enjoy it?


welcome to my world. you'll be sharing your most intimate moments with this contraption for the next six months

anyway the next day we headed out to Puli, the geographical center of Ilha Formosa, to go to the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village. sounds as if it's a bit like the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii, right? wrong. it's like a second-rate Disneyland with some wax models of aboriginal Taiwanese. at the PCC you have real live Polynesian and Melanesian people walking around talking to you about their culture, and showing it to you with various performances. there were a few--a very few--performances at the FACV, but most of the time it was unclear what was going on. and, in the tribal villages, there really were just wax models of aboriginal people. most visitors seemed much more interested in the numerous food stands than they were in any kind of culture anyway, so i'm sure they didn't mind.


the entrance to the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village

anyway the rides were pretty okay, and i had another funny experience with a ride operator which further demonstrated the Taiwanese mindset. we were getting on the ride that has you sit in a chair which faces outward from a huge tower, the thrill being that the chair is hoisted to the top of the tower and then dropped. we put our bags and loose articles in the bins provided and climbed aboard, but as the attendant came to check our safety belts, she motioned for me to take off my glasses and give them to her. having cost more than her scooter, i was not about to hand over my high custom eyewear, so i smiled and made the "okay" symbol, and thought that she would respect my sovereignty over my own possessions. no such luck. she kept after it, trying to tell me they would fly off, me telling her they wouldn't. then she walked off and i thought for a fleeting moment that she would start the ride, but she just brought the other attendant over to try her hand at persuading me. i finally realized that they really wouldn't start the ride until i had capitulated, but i wasn't about to go up sightless, so i motioned that i would put them in my pocket, which seemed to satisfy them. when i put them on again, just after lifting from the ground, i knew i wouldn't be able to ride this ride again; indeed, both attendants were looking at me sternly when we came down. but they were looking at me because i had my glasses on, still, and enduring their silent wrath was worth being able to see the view from the top.


the view from the top. note the fun space needle at the bottom of the park (middle of the picture)

the views made the trip to the park worthwhile. it is set on a long hill overlooking some pretty spectacular countryside, and they have some aboriginal buildings at the top of the hill which go up about four stories and so give a good platform for pictures.


though this map is marked for some obscure Feng Shui purpose, it's the only map i could find that shows the relative locations of the places on this trip

the next place we went was pretty good for pictures as well. maybe too good. the Chung Tai Chan Monastery in Puli is one of the biggest buildings i have ever seen, certainly for religious purposes. some say it's the largest religious building in the world. it is home to who knows how many monks and nuns, but judging by the size, quite a lot. actually i know very little about this place, the website is all in Chinese. but most of the links on the left hand side seem to go to pictures, in case you want to get a better feel for the scale of this thing.



a handy schematic of the so-called Chung Tai Chan Monastery, and a view of the behemoth



Chung Tai Chan is a Buddhist monastery, this much i do know, and many of the Buddha statues are quite impressive. though i really can't understand the draw of Buddhism, there is a certain appeal to the notion of becoming a perfectly enlightened fat guy and sitting around all jolly-like forever.


who wouldn't want to be a Buddha, really?

maybe there's more to it than that, and i guess that many millions of people the world over derive some comfort from the promise of release from their miserable mortality. they certainly seem fervent in their prayers, often to quite beautiful effect. their shambalistic chantings inside the monastery made the perfect background to this impressive display of prayer ribbons:


prayer ribbons hanging outside the Chung Tai Chan Monastery in Puli

finally, after far too many hours on the chartered karaoke bus (oh yes, they really do have these, and people really do sing the entire time the bus is moving) they took us to Puli's wine making factory. they do other things there, and we did have some awfully good fruit popsicles, but the reason this place is an attraction, at least for the non-drinking Mormons, is that it showcases some of the devastation of the 9-21 earthquake of 1999. Puli was very close to the epicenter of Taiwan's most powerful quake of recent times, and so was greatly damaged. in a memorable visual demonstration of nature's power they showed a huge distilling vat that had been crushed like a tin can by an enormous concrete beam from the old factory. then, as if to demonstrate its caprice, they showed hundreds of the old-style ceramic storage vessels that had apparently gone unharmed by the quake.


twinkle twinkle little shoes. i thought i'd shed some light on this scene

of course, my take on the moral of the story may be way off the mark--it was all in Chinese after all.

thefriends

last Sunday was a sad day in the life and Taiwan times of thejayfather. my good friends Mike and Chris Cammock left the country for greener pastures, in this case for Mike to continue study in his native New Zealand. they had been here for just over a year when they left, and were an invaluable source of information for such neophytes as myself. it helped that Mike had served his two-year LDS mission in the country, down in Kaohsiung, and so speaks the language, but far from being simply tour guides, they quickly became good friends. too good for some, maybe: Mike and i share the same penchant for debate and argumentation, so much so that Chris once remarked, only half in jest i suspect, "you guys are the same person."


a rare view inside the velvet ropes at the last hurrah of the nigge dongshi club

to my alter ego, and to his wife, you're missed already and thejayfather looks forward to seeing you again.

xie xie xie.

thegorge

and so we come, finally, to the culmination of my round-island trip. this leg of the journey, though covering much more, was dominated by our visit to Taroko National Park. Taroko Gorge is rightly known as the crown jewel of Taiwan's natural treasures; hopefully you will get some idea of the gorge's splendor from the photos below.


an example of Taroko Gorge's stunning scenery

after we finally got our bus tickets (see thecircumnavigation) the trip from Taitung up the East coast was very smooth, at least for Taiwan, and our bus made the 170 km (100 mile) journey in a blistering four hours! honestly that's quite fast for this place. there's no such thing as a real highway on the East coast, so we went through every little burg imaginable, and were waved down at all kinds of random points along the way. i was actually stunned that their time projection for the trip was so accurate. anyway, the scenery on that drive was no less spectacular than the views in the gorge, blue water stretching forever on one side with impossibly green mountains towering in dramatic relief on the other.

though we didn't get any pictures of that scenery, you'll get some idea from the Taroko pictures, since it is set in the same mountain range. one thing to which i wish we could have got closer was the San Shian Tai--the Platform of the Three Immortals. it appears to be a small islet off the coast just North of Taitung, connected to the mainland by a rather spiffy looking bridge that is composed of eight distinctly arching sections. i assume it's supposed to be evocative of the archetypal Chinese dragon; either way, it's an effective visual statement. though the circumnavigation was quite a whirlwind affair, it has enabled me to focus in on the areas i would like to see in greater detail. since the San Shian Tai is one of these, i hope to have pictures at some future date, so stay tuned.


another Taroko view

the terminus of the bus journey was the fabled Hualien (or Wha-lien). though Taitung was endearing because it seemed like a normal city, Hualien was much more entertaining. they seemed to have better coast and more ways to enjoy it, and it seemed to be a slightly hipper city with more going on in general. Taitung felt a little too sleepy for our big adventures. and besides, Hualien is very convenient to Taroko, and we found someone to rent us a scooter. actually that's a lie. some hotelliers found us someone to rent us a scooter. as you exit the train station in Hualien, you are greeted with a stunning view of... dozens of hotels. on the way down to them we inquired after scooter rentals and were turned down at a couple of places, for not having Taiwanese driver's licenses. so we decided to ditch the bags at a hotel and keep looking. in the middle of a street we were accosted by a lady using very broken English to pitch her sleeping establishment to us, but a little quick thinking made her give us more than just the room she had been counting on. i told her that we were looking for a scooter first, and wouldn't be checking into anywhere until we had one, so as with the girls at the middle-of-nowhere gas station, our problem became hers, though more because of the almighty New Taiwan Dollar than for the joy of helping. it didn't matter to me though; in no time she had us hooked up with a new-looking 125cc scooter for NT$500. that's about US$15, so i guess the NT is not so mighty, and this is without any security and on an expired California driver's license. pretty good deal. actually, at one point before we'd found that place, it sounded like the hotel lady was going to make her husband lend us his scooter, just to get us to stay. maybe the NT is mightier than it seems.


Jill and i at the entrance to Taroko National Park, home of Taiwan's best sight--Taroko Gorge

Taroko Gorge is accessible through the Central Cross-Island Highway of Taiwan, much of which West of the gorge remains shut to anything larger than motorcycles since the 9/21 Earthquake of 1999. this epicenter of this earthquake was in Puli, the geographical center of Taiwan, but was strong enough as to level numerous parts of many cities and cause tremendous rock slides. it is said that the peak of Taiwan's highest mountain is now eight meters higher than it was prior to the earthquake (that's about 25 feet). Feng Yuan was quite devastated by the quake, and many of our students have friends or family members who were killed as a result. the highway is the main road running East-West in the center of the map below.


a map of the gorge area

what i really want to talk about is engineering. the following photos show some good examples, some bad examples, and some downright scary examples:

a rather fetching bridge in Taroko Gorge, along with another, though perhaps slightly less fetching example:

the problem is, when you are familiar with the ethos of Taiwanese engineering, all Taiwanese engineering becomes very scary, regardless of its elegance. what i would like to give a sense of is the stairs. the Taiwanese appear to be constitutionally incapable of constructing a uniform set of stairs--too many are the times i've skinned a shin on a too-high step. so when they undertake feats like building eight flights of totally unsupported stairs, as in this pagoda whose insides are pictured below, one is led to question one's own sanity when climbing those stairs.



looking up to the top of the pagoda, and looking down. note well the suspended stairs, low railing, and fully open center.
absolutely terrifying



but climb i certainly did, with the wind gusting and the doors on all sides of the building slamming open and closed; i even went out on the eighth floor balcony and we got a shot of the view. very scary but well worth it i think you'll agree.


the view from the top

and then we trusted ourselves to the various bridges of less stable-looking character. that's a good burst of adrenaline, at least, as if trusting yourself to a scooter on a windy mountain road wasn't doing it for you.

so what do you think we did next?

you guessed it

finally, before we went back to Hualien to head home via Taipei, we had to stop by the Chang Chun, or Eternal Spring Shrine, which looks very picturesque set way up there in those verdant hills, straddling a waterfall. look:


the Eternal Spring Shrine in Taroko Gorge, where i learned the secret of immortality

apparently this shrine was built in memoriam to the 400 or so workers who died while constructing the Central Cross-Island Highway, and their names are all inscribed on stone tablets inside the building at far left of the picture. its a bit of a walk through caves and such to get to the shrine, but the shrine itself acts as the head for one of the many supposedly spectacular trails in the park. supposedly because thejayfather can't comment on any of the trails, not having walked them himself. but we did see this curious little thing on the trek over to the shrine, hidden in one of the caves:


the awesome Buddhist "Staircase to Nowhere", where i learned why being short is a blessing

there appears to be some mystical power associated with stairs that lead nowhere. perhaps they lead to enlightenment, or a new state of mind and being, diverting your crass western mind from its compulsive drive to get somewhere. whatever the purpose, even the people here don't seem to know why their religions do what they do, so until i take the staircase next time, i won't be able to enlighten you.