Traveling Around the Island

Today is the second day back in the routine of waking up and teaching. Last Sunday I was in Taipei, and the three or four days preceding that I was wondering around the island with Hun Lye and Kevin Lane (who both now are in Tibet). The trip was significant for me on many accounts. One, which seems only symbolic, that we traveled around (encompassed) the whole island, in fact had many opportunities to show me my digestion of my experience here as a whole. Managing driving and arrangements, for instance, and being the designated "ben di ren" (local person) I probably spoke more Chinese those four days than I normally do in several weeks otherwise. That was both a great opportunity and a revelation, proving to me in more concrete terms, what exactly I have learned, and not.

To go into detail what we did, without a worked narrative, might be tedious. Suffice it to say that it was a splendid trip for me. Encompassing the island was a significant enterprise. For it also allowed us to immerse ourselves in all sides of the island.

Beginning with Chiayi, the first day and night, the lesson was in the culture that dominates most of the island. We saw swing dancing and entertainment in a park on a Tuesday night, as well as tons of food stalls, tea stalls, and exercise parks. Wednesday, we traveled to the mountains and saw tea production first hand, from the very picking (migrant Vietnamese workers getting paid 60NT per kilo of raw tea leaves), to the roasting and rolling, and to the drinking of the tea itself (as expensive as 6600NT per kilo). Here were guys smoking cigarettes, chewing betel nut, and drinking Heineken all the while bending over mounds of fresh tea, sending out the most delirious aroma that stuck to our clothes and imaginations long afterward.

Wednesday night and Thursday morning, we spent at Foguangshan, the largest and probably most significant monastery in Taiwan, where I stayed four years ago as part of a school program, and where Hun also has connections. Here was Taiwan in its strangest manifestation, where massive buildings were being constructed over night and where nuns with beaming diligence performed all significant labors, from pouring concrete, to amassing and compiling volumes of Buddhist art. An island of incense and activity.

Thursday evening brought us to Taidung on the east coast, quiet and filled with indigenous and Hakka groups. Friday brought us up the coast, seeing some of Taiwan's most beautiful coastlines and laid back towns, and we spent the evening and night in Rueishui, where, besides carbonated hot springs settled into the mountains, we enjoyed some of the best Hakka cuisine in the area. Friday brought us through Haulien (we stopped for their famous dumplings, bought the delectable moji treats and traditional millet wine) and all the way up to Taipei, where I dropped Hun and Kevin at their hotel, and journeyed on to where I was staying, at a friend of Fiona's new apartment in the north part of the city, where she and all her friends were absorbed in playing Mahjong.

The video below follows the same progression as above.

Bugs

While I was biking home this lunch, I found myself thinking about bugs, probably because of an experience I had this morning when a cockroach flew at me and then disappeared. Perhaps his wings were moving faster than my brain (I had only gotten up because my bladder had pulled me out of bed and toward the bathroom) but it looked like he disappeared. So I was thinking, "What is worse than a cockroach?" And then I got to thinking that a cockroach isn't so bad. Most of the time it's trying to run away from you and to find a dark corner to grow bigger in.

So I began thinking what the worst possible bug would be. I'm still not done, but you can join me, too. So far I was thinking a tic-roach would be pretty bad. You know, you would be walking through tall grass, and all of sudden you notice that a roach is on your leg sucking your blood! Instead of shunning light, for example, the roach's one purpose in life would be to attach itself to your skin and suck your blood. Just think of waking up in the morning with a couple of those guys hooked to your ear.

But what a triple cross? For example a grasshopper tic-roach, something that would attack you in the broad daylight from across a parking lot. Something that made a loud crackling sound as it gleefully arced across the sky to bounce off your chest. However, so far my most sublime conception is that of a butterfly tic-roach, an example that might appear queer at first but upon investigation will show that an addition of a good part makes the whole thing much more worse. For instance, a butterfly has a chaotic pattern to it when it flies that would only heighten the horror of seeing one of these things in a lonely wooded grove headed right toward you. I also feel that the combination of horror and beauty (the wings I imagine to still be a butterfly's wings) would make the whole thing much more intolerable, like ice cream mixed with rum raisins.

In any case, it's for you to ponder, and to leave a comment if you think of something better. Just keep in mind the thought of dozing off under the cool shade of a tree on a summer day, waking up to the draft of gently pumping wings, a crowd of alighted flowers now sucking at your face.