Halfway around the World to Find the Picturesque

“Youzihhu-- “Youzihhu sits within a natural basin on the eastern side of the mountain beside a deserted aboriginal village. Ruins of early stone dwellings with their vacant fields bring about a sense of vicissitude and uncertainty. Looking down at it from the high point of the entrance road, you can see randomly scattered stone houses with mottled brick walls nestling close to the mountains, which is a picturesque addition to this site.”

I descended the road into the “natural basin” halfway realizing that I simply would have to push my bicycle back up and dumped it into some weeds. I had to believe that it was such an undesirable product that no one would ever steal it, for I did not want to walk back to the guest house. On my first test ride, “around the block,” I broke the peddle clean off the arm. This was the first bike of two, provided for free from the guesthouse. Neither bike was very good and as I have not found a way to rent motorcycles without an international driver’s license, they were my only means of transportation.

On this island, which really is a piece of jagged volcanic rock, and as far as I could see, eternally beaten by the light gray waves, the roads (or, rather, road), fluctuated from steep, twisting climbs unto the higher plain, and the slow, peaceful undulations of the waving, long grass hills where nymph like deer hung about and roamed in packs at night. For the latter terrain, having a bicycle was rather nice, but concerning the former, the bicycle was not built for such strain, especially with my leg length. The bikes' seats were built so low that even at the very lowest point of the leg thrust, my knee was barely below my waist.

So like I said, I threw it into the weeds. When I reached the beach, the basin with the ruined houses, and the waves that fell stumbling in over the scattered volcanic rock, I went sort of distracted for several hours. I think I lost track of the time. Volcanic rock is very easy to climb, and so I took advantage of this—following waterfalls up the mountain. Roaming out as far as I could on the rock formations that extended out into the sea. After a while the continuous high wind and threshing of the sea seized to seem terrible any more. Now I felt the perspective of the rock, or of the sea from a greater distance—a sense of calm and almost claustrophobic peace. Here I was with a bike, an entire island, and an entire day—what to do!

The first night I arrived, I, along with the six other guests, and the uncle of the family who ran the guesthouse, went out driving on scooters, even though it was a constant chill factor. It was not cold necessarily when looking at a thermometer, but the wind was so strong and constant that any body warmth produced was immediately striped away, so that after awhile, the fire inside slowed considerably and without eating—fuel—it turned an inescapable cold. We rode about on the highlands with a huge flashlight and went looking for deer, just like people would do back in Pennsylvania for shits and giggles, but here the scene was slightly different—slightly eerie. A bunch of silent people in the mid-twenties, driving around on scooters, neither excited nor bored, stopping every once in a while because something like eyes flashed back in the night.

We stopped by some other places. Though we were on the highlands, we somehow found ourselves in a cave with candles lit, and a large bowl of fruit set out on an alter. A pear was lying on the floor so the uncle, when he entered, replaced it respectfully. This was Quanyin’s cave. In a guidebook before I came, I had read something like that a man had been washed ashore and woke up in this cave and saw a cave formation that looked to him to be an emanation of the deity—thus the shrine to this day. There was a similar story like this I remember when I was on the coast of Thailand, but it wasn’t Quanyin—it was a giant penis. The cave in Thailand was filled with giant penises offered by the local fishermen.

The cave was rather odd. Water running about under us, and above us you could hear the wind and the laurel like shrubs dancing in the wind. Through much of the tunnel and cave, the rock simply was overhanging us, and there was space that you could see up into the vegetation above and, occasionally, the stars. The roots were growing where our heads were. As I said, it was rather strange.

I was accompanied by six other people in their twenties, two couples who all knew each other, and two girls who didn’t know anyone else. All of them were from Taipei and had come to Ludao for one night. I thought this strange for two reasons. The first is because the travel expense is higher than the expense it is to stay on Green Island (Ludao) and the other is the ferry ride over—basically, the most miserable fifty minutes of your life. Plastic bags are stuffed into the seat pouch in front of EVERYBODY by several attendants with un-humored features. The most vivid image I walked away with was seeing the attendants, walking hither and thither, making trips to the public, central trashcan, with sloshing plastic bags of various muddy mixture. I did not look forward to leaving Ludao.

In the caves, the uncle was explaining various other formations that over time have been identified as resembling over things. I was a little bored and more interesting in the wind above me and feeling strange, but every once in a while I asked one of the girls what he was talking about because she knew English very well. She would give thoughtful one word responses, so I was a little put off, and maybe she wasn’t really listening as well. I let my eyes look at the rock and make my own impressions. I was never a big one in looking at clouds and saying what I saw. I have very often let my fancy play with clouds, but to say, “that looks like an old man sleeping,” never really seems like a good idea.

I thought that at any moment I would find something—see the rock move, or to see something so horrific, frozen into the rock, something someone had never seen before but that was undeniably there, that I would scream and frighten the entire party, but soon after we left, and I never experienced that possibility.

On my bike, back up from the basin, I made my way around the island, past the various outlooks, and then past the beaches where many people go snorkeling. At this time of year, and especially with the cold weather, no one was doing anything more than stopping and looking. I made my way past the hot springs—my central driving force for coming here—where Teacher Minnie told me she would get up at 3 in the morning to go soak in the waters and wait to watch the sunrise. It’s one of only three hot springs in the world where the water is salted. I actually didn’t get a chance to go. 3 am was a little early for anyone at the guesthouse to take me halfway around the island, and though we tried to go another time, a misunderstanding and a rather perplexing situation denied me the opportunity to fulfill that chance to sit in those waters. Until another time. Here is a photo of a road sign.

Going to Green Island

Concerning the first day of the New Year, 2009

Well, it was a new day of a new world as I sat proud in my seat, the world rushing by outside my train window, and nothing in the world to indicate that the calendar had made its magnificent change other than my ticket stub with six novel digits, newly stamped. I thought it absurd that people made resolutions on this day—more absurd that they chose to stay to the last clinging fragments of the last dying day. I had been in bed. Actually, I heard the rat-tat-tat-tat of fireworks that lasted for, oh, maybe two minutes, until the fuse (and whoever's interest) burnt through. Then again peace, leading, racing me to morning, where I awoke, stuffed some clothes into my bag, wiped down my table and counter tops, and entered outside into a deserted world.

The streets were mostly empty so early as the sun was still quietly low somewhere behind all that foggy sky. Even if the world had not opened up right then to greet me, I felt just fine, peddling down the road, the wind particularly bitter this morning as the winds had changed sometime the evening before. I think it’s just commonsense to do the proper thing, and just as someone that you’ve anticipated coming from far away—perhaps from across the sea—you make sure to greet them at the door, well dressed, and with a cup of tea. So we should greet the New Year. And instead of being jinxed by the last, dizzy from its departure—altogether missing the entrance of the next—why not anticipate the inevitable? So—early morning—flight on my bicycle down empty roads (the first and simplest kind of flight). No wonder it was two men with bicycles who discovered the path to the sky.

A ticket waited for me at the train station window. In that last, difficult and troubled year, already a half day ago, I had been told that there were no tickets left to go where I wanted, that I needed to have had reserved a seat a month in advance. But not so this year. This morning there were tickets for everyone. And then, eventually, on the train, the sky opened up and the sun showed herself already risen and dressed. I was very excited and it took me nearly an hour to close my eyes. I noted everything that passed—an orange grove, a patch of mustard field (the only two colors in that bleak landscape.) The warehouses and farm buildings looked like rusty electrical fixtures on a circuit board. I noted everything that passed then sat the journal down. I had seen to things—the sun was well greeted and well on its way (and well it should be, for it was to wake my neighbors, across the seas).

A picture from my train window taken later in the day, and on the other side of Taiwan, which seemed composed of nothing else but mountains, breaks of gravel plains made by streams, and a series of tunnels that became so often that they seemed more real than the landscapes outside. The train's vibrations, leaving the cocoon of the tunnel, radiated out into silence, like suddenly stumbling onto an impossible dream in the middle of a peaceful night.