Video from Ocean

Click on "Joe's Taiwan Blog" link at right to see video footage from Baisha including Joe's remarkable ocean entrance.

We Touched the Tip

My older brother Chris arrived from LA on Tuesday night. We spent the rest of the week exploring Chiayi and on Saturday we drove to Kanding National Park with Joe and Fiona. The park is pretty large and appears to cover the entire southern tip of Taiwan. We spent midday hiking some trails where we could see craggy coral mounds jutting out of the hillside. We saw a lot of butterflies, too -- apparently 106 species have been identified in the park. We also saw a goat, crab, various insects, and monkeys. The monkeys were a surprise... I didn't know monkeys lived here.

In the afternoon we visited the lighthouse, built by a Brit in 1882, and hiked a trail that goes around the tip of the island. The lighthouse was closed for the holidays, so we didn't get to go inside.

Finally we decided we'd better head to Baisha (white sand) beach, which is on the western side of the tip, to catch the sunset. The beach was lovely -- small and protected -- and hosted a fair number of people on shore but only two swimming in the waves. We arrived about thirty minutes before sunset. The boys put on their suits and jumped right in. I hadn't planned on swimming --- but then a wave caught my foot and it was WARM. So I ripped off my clothes on the spot and dove in. Not all of my clothes. And I didn't dive. But it was lovely, lovely, lovely, warm, clean, translucent blue water. We swam around and completely forgot to watch the sun set... the water was too wonderful.

It took a while to drag Joe out of the water, but when we finally did we dried off and made the long drive back to Chiayi in the dark. We didn't get back to town until after 9, so we stopped downtown and had a late dinner on the patio of a sushi restaurant. Ah, exhaustion... today we're recuping because tonight is Lantern Festival! The town has been prepping all week (and longer, I'm sure). Should be beautiful.

I'm trying to upload more photos, but uploading here takes eons, so they'll be trickling into my picasa album over the next several days. Just click on my "Taiwan" slideshow on the righthand side of this page to view them.

Kenting / Kanding = Southern Point of Taiwan!

Maybe you can't tell... but that rocky crag we're climbing down was really tall and scary!!!

And speaking of things you can't tell from the photograph... that ocean (which I jumped into about five minutes after taking that photo) is super warm!

Photos From Chris

Now you can see some good photographs of Chiayi... much better than the ones I took. My older brother Chris, who is visiting for two weeks, took these around town. Last night we celebrated Joe's birthday, so those pictures are included, too.

Fire in the Streets

On Sunday I left Joe’s apartment rather late at night to walk home. I had tried to translate a Chinese poem into English, and then we had telephoned our parents. It was nearly midnight now, and Joe needed to rise early for work in the morning.

As I left his apartment I noticed that the balmy air smelled strongly of incense. Even the wind carried traces of smoke. At home I associate incense with hemp and tie-dye, but here I associate it with prayer and offerings. In the near and far distance I could hear fireworks booming and crackling. When I turned the corner onto Xinming road, I saw a bonfire. The fire was in a sort of bucket on three legs, and the walls of the container had shapes cut out of it so the body of the fire was visible.

The bucket was placed along the side of the road in the parking lane. A shopkeeper stood in front of the fire, feeding it offerings of paper money. (Paper money, which is currency that wouldn’t work in the shops but is of substantial value to deities, is manufactured and sold in tight bundles and is a common offering in temples and shrines. Yesterday I saw handfuls of it crumpled up and stuffed into the mouths of two stone tigers guarding a temple.)

As I approached, I saw that the shopkeeper had a small folding table set up between his fire and storefront. The table was laden with pyramids of fruit, bouquets of flowers, tall candles, and burning incense. Inside the open storefront and against the very back wall I could see another shrine, this one was larger, ornate, permanent, and I guessed it might be home to a resident deity.

Walking further down the street, I passed more and more fires, some nearly extinguished, some only half built and not yet lit, but all accompanied by a table piled high with offerings. Some shrines were being tended by families, and some just by a single person. In some places I noticed rings of water on the ground, and I saw that during the ritual the people would pour circles around their fires. In front of some shops, the ring of water was the only evidence anything had taken place.

When I got home, I unloaded my arms in my room and took to the streets again. I walked west this time, into a smaller, narrower part of town I hadn’t entered before, where the houses were lower and older and the streets were darker and quieter. Peering down the alleys I saw scattered rows of glowing fires. Passing a large nightclub, I saw several men at work filling an enormous wire can with paper money; their fire would be huge. Three folding tables were joined behind them to hold an enormous spread of fruit, flowers, and incense. Women in short dresses wandered back and forth hanging onto the arms of suited men.

Now and then I saw fireworks explode over the rooftops. Firecrackers snapped and popped like gunfire, sometimes down alleys, sometimes in the main street, sometimes at the base of a bucketed fire. If I hadn’t known the sounds were fireworks, I would have been frightened.

I walked for an hour through the smoky fragrant streets, wondering if I would find my way home but at the same time too mesmerized to try. At some eventual point I found myself on a grassy and treed median with a path running down the center and it felt familiar and so I took it in a roundabout direction and walked until the houses began to feel right again and--sure enough, as I knew I would--I caught a whiff of osmanthus and I knew I was across the street from Joe’s school and that my door was just there in the darkness… and it was.

P.S. Don’t get the wrong idea… the streets don’t usually smell so fine: this was a special occasion.

Tudi Gong

Well, I thought this was waaaaay too long for the blog, so I decided I'd just email it to my parents. Parents enjoy things like this... long detailed accounts from their children. They said "this isn't too long for your blog! It's interesting!" So, on the chance somebody else has the attention span my devoted parents have, I'm copying it here. Most of the things described are better illustrated in the slide show...

Tudi Gong

On Sunday evening, the first day of Chinese New Year, Fiona’s cousin calls and says she is going to stop by for a visit. We have just finished our dinner and Joe is preparing tea, so we sit down to share several rounds when she arrives.

She is wearing new clothes as dictated by Chinese New Year tradition and has on a brilliant red scarf. Red is a color associated with prosperity. “I’m wearing this for good luck,” she says indicating the scarf, “I need more money.”

Cousin produces a red envelope from her purse to show Fiona. It is decorated with gold script and illustrations of a deity and contains NT$600 (about twenty US dollars). She says something to Fiona in Taiwanese, and Fiona translates. “She wants to get her car cleaned, but her car is bigger than mine so it will be very expensive,” she says, laughing, “so she borrowed this money from Tudi Gong.” “Who is Tudi Gong?” I ask. Tudi, Fiona replies, is a god.

“Tu” means ground or land, and “Di” means earth. Temples for Tudi exist in small towns and villages all over the place, and some large towns or cities may even have ten or eleven temples for him. Tudi Gong is associated with wealth, so he’s a popular god to petition for money. One particular temple in the area, Zi Nan Gong (“purple south temple”), is home to a particularly powerful Tudi, and his money is especially lucky. So lucky, in fact, that he loans it to people in financial need so they can attract more wealth.

People who want to borrow money must first petition Tudi Gong for a loan. They visit the temple and explain why they need money. Perhaps they have no job, perhaps they are ill, perhaps they need to buy something expensive. Then, they drop two wooden blocks on the ground which will indicate Tudi’s response (yes, no, or maybe). If the stones answer maybe, you may petition for a smaller amount. If the answer is yes, the guards of the temple will send you away with money in a red envelope.

Money borrowed from Tudi Gong isn’t spent: it’s put somewhere special where the borrower wants money to accumulate. A bank account or safety deposit box would be a good place to keep it. Borrowers are allowed to keep the money for one year. Once the year is up, the money must be returned to Zi Nan Gong, along with extra money as a thanks and offering. Fiona tells us that people typically return twice what they borrowed.

“What happens if you keep the money and never bring it back?” we ask. Well, you never really get tracked down, she says. So many people make offerings and return extra money that there’s never really a shortage for new borrowers. Most borrowers are pretty faithful about making their returns, though. If they don’t return it, I imagine, they’ll never enjoy prosperity again.

This temple is near where Joe and I and Fiona are going to go camping in a few days, and Fiona says we can stop by to see Tudi if we’d like. I tell them that I need money and I want to petition to borrow some, but they remind me that I’ll have to fly back to Taiwan in a year to return it. Ah well, I’ll just get a job instead.

We camp for two days in the hills of Nantou. Nantou is the only county in Taiwan without coastline. Instead, it’s cramped with soaring lush green hills, at least one snowy mountain, and deep river valleys.

On our way home Fiona asks us if we still want to stop at Zi Nan Gong, Tudi’s temple. We certainly do.

I had imagined a modest temple with small, calm crowd of visitors or devotees. Not at all. As we near the temple, traffic cops begin to control the intersections, guiding lines of cars into various parking areas. We creep through the lots until finally finding a spot. We lock up and take off toward the festivities, umbrellas held defensively aloft against the persistent dreary sprinkle.

The parking lots are separated from the temple by several long chutes of vendors hawking everything from fried mushrooms to fresh cabbages to golden hens to plastic-wrapped umbrellas. Eventually we reach the small piazza in front of the temple. It is packed to the gills with swarming people holding umbrellas, golden hens, and other belongings high overhead to escape the chest-level jostling. We pass a statue of a broken-antlered stag standing watch over a recumbent doe. Just beyond we come upon a monstrous hen that appears to be woven of basketry. She is probably a dozen feet tall from base to beak, and her pedestal is another five feet high. The pedestal houses a cylindrical tunnel, about six feet long and just large enough for ducking and tucking people to pass through. A steady stream of visitors enter on one side and pop out on the other, collapsing their umbrellas as they enter and popping them open again as they alight. Passing beneath the hen is good luck, apparently, so we close our umbrellas and join in.


On the other side of the piazza is a stage where several dozen people are milling about watching the crowd. In front of the stage is another huge wicker construction. From what I can make out, this one resembles an enormous boat; the bow and stern rise higher than my head. Joe says it is built in the shape of some old style of currency. In the center of the boat form, an enormous wicker sphere is skewered on an axis from bow to stern. The sphere is spinning so quickly, I assume it must be plugged in somewhere. Judging by the people reaching out their hands to touch the contraption, I assume it is another objet d’ luck. Fiona explains later that the sculpture is “jin yuan bao,” or, more literally, “golden money treasure” – an ancient style of currency.

We observe the spinning sphere with fascination until the people onstage begin throwing candy into the crowd and a minor riot breaks out, somewhat hindered by the roof of shifting and snagging umbrellas. The umbrellas, previously hoisted high to deflect the rain, are suddenly maneuvered upside down to serve as huge candy catchment systems. A woman nearby notices I’m too stunned to partake in the scramble, so she hands me some candy she’s gathered from the ground.

Our next stop is the temple. As we approach, Fiona tells me to notify Tudi Gong before taking any pictures. “What should I tell him?” I ask. “Tell him you are here for entertainment and would like to take some pictures because you are very interested.” She put her hands together and bows toward the temple. “Ok,” I say, and follow her lead. The crowd density increases the nearer we draw, until finally we are forced to collapse our own umbrellas and press together to prevent ourselves from begin carried in opposite directions.

We push through the crowd until we reach a stand selling incense and paper money. Fiona buys a bundle of incense and gives us six sticks each. She directs us to hold it with our thumbs in the back and our fingers in the front. We’ve seen several huge, ornate urn-shaped vessels in front of the temple, each full of some combination of sand, fire, and incense offerings, and we squirm our way toward the nearest one so we can light our incense. The crowd is too dense for Fiona and me to penetrate, but lanky Joe is able to get his arm through the final barrier of people and sets our incense smoking.

From there we surrender ourselves to the swarm thronging toward Tudi.

We are carried across the first roofed patio and, finally, up a step and into sight of golden Tudi residing in the inner temple. The hardcore petitioners fill the final chamber, and we don’t press that far. Instead, we plant ourselves in the teaming crowd near the door, and Fiona tells us how to address Tudi Gong and shows us the proper way to wave our incense before offering three sticks each into a nearby vat of sand. As we stand near the door I heard a distant clacking noise.

“Do you hear that?” Joe asks me, and I nod.

“That sound is coming from the petitioners,” he explains, “they’re dropping their tiles.” I stand on my tip-toes trying to see, but the crowd is too dense.

The air is so thick with incense that I begin to sneeze. Visitors teeter past holding huge fistfuls of incense aloft, billowing trails of smoke in their wake; ashes crumble and fall onto the heads and shoulders below. We carry our remaining incense back outside the temple to leave in another vat of sand. The huge urns are prickling with incense sticks stuck upright in the sand; temple workers hurriedly empty handfuls of incense and douse them in water to make space for the new offerings.


After offering the last of our incense, we go to stand by a side door to the temple where we can look into the small chamber where Tudi Gong regales in gold. This is where visitors can petition Tudi for loans. Each petitioner stands praying to Tudi with hands folded around a pair of red wooden tiles that fit together like opposing sides of a cashew nut. Once a petitioner has made her prayer and petition, she drops the wooden pieces onto the floor. Depending on whether both tiles land face up or face down, a petition is granted or not. If one tile lands up and one tile lands down, the answer is “maybe” and the petitioner might try again for a smaller amount. Once the petitioners have their answers, they pick up their wooden blocks and leave the chamber to go to the “bank.” This is an adjoining building on the other side of the temple. We go for a visit.

The inside and entry to the loan office is so crowded we can’t even approach. Through the barred windows the room appears to resemble an old fashioned bank complete with clerks standing behind little windowed counters. Fiona tells us there are six windows inside. A petitioner approved by Tudi Gong must go up to a window, report the amount of money he’s been approved to borrow, and then surrender his citizen I.D. number before receiving the approved amount of money in a red envelope. The loans are good for one year.



Outside the loan office, we see more people jumbling past with golden hens. The hens are identical and are each encased in a small glass box about the size of a bread toaster. We saw many of these hens earlier in the throng around Tudi but weren’t sure exactly what they represented. Each hen has three golden eggs resting behind her tail feathers and each glass box has a little window in front of the cage hen’s face. We stop a young boy and his mother to ask if we can take a picture of their golden hen. They agree and tell us that they have had their hen for two years. The hens can be purchased from the temple and are taken home for good luck and to attract prosperity. Every year, however, the hens are carried back to the temple where their guardians wash them three times in the incense smoke and show them to Tudi. Then they can go home again, refreshed.


On our way out of the temple, we decide to get some food. The long lines of booths are irresistible. Fiona buys an enormously heavy bag of dried noodles for home, and then we focus on dinner. We start with a bag of freshly sliced guava with plum powder, and then buy a baggie of deep fried mushrooms. Next comes a cardboard box of sweet gooey sweet potato, and then a big bag of roasted chestnuts. Our final acquisitions are three skewered slices of stinky tofu.

Stinky tofu is really, really stinky. I mean, this is stinky stinky stuff. It’s not stinky like dead animal stinky, it’s stinky like live animal stinky. It’s rank. Joe explains to me that stinky tofu is tofu that was busy fermenting until somebody decided to fry it up and put it on skewers and sell it to innocent passersby. Like us. Actually, stinky tofu is a bit of a delicacy and, though I don’t find it especially delicious, it does taste a lot better than it smells. Hours later, my clothes still smelled like stinky tofu.

Photos are Up hup hup!

Check 'em out. Forty photographs.
Click here.

Going Camping

We're going camping... I'll try to get photos/videos up soon, but I need to get a camera cable... I'm having a great time have mostly caught up on my sleep, I think, mostly, mostly. I think that where we're going... we'll get to see sheep dancing!

Betel Nuts and Traffic Jelly, or, "First Time, Maybe Die!"

Welcome to Taiwan.

I arrived in Taipei Saturday afternoon and took a train south to Chiayi with Joe. Fiona picked us up at the train station and brought us to her family's home for the Chinese New Year feast. The feast was already laid out when we arrived, so after some brief greetings and introductions, we sat down to eat. That's when Fiona's brother passed me a betel nut.

BETEL NUT: An Introduction

During my flight from Seoul to Taipei, I figured I'd better start reading up on Taiwan. Out came my glasses and Rough Guide. Betel nut, according to the guide, enjoys "almost totemic status" in Taiwan. Betel nuts are the seeds of the betel palm, and apparently provide a stimulating effect on their chewers (chewees?). The betel nuts here are wrapped up in folded leaves and come in different flavors (mint? anise?). My Rough Guide notes that they are notoriously sold by scantily clad women standing in glass boxes and that truckers are the most devoted customers. Well. (When I ask Fiona later if this is this is true, she says enthusiastically "yes, spicy betel nut sisters!")

The betel nut is chewed but never swallowed. The bright orange juice isn't swallowed either -- it gets spit out. Yuck. And it's apparently a carcinogen. Taiwan has one of the highest rates of mouth and throat cancer in Asia, and the doctors are saying the nut is to blame.

CHEW LIKE GUM, SPIT SPIT SPIT

When we arrived at Fiona's, I immediately noticed that her brother had betel nut teeth. By this I mean that they were orange. He was a chewer. In his pocket, Brother kept a plastic baggie full of beautifully wrapped betel nuts. He passed one nut to me and one nut to Joe, and indicated we should chew away. The mood of the moment suggested it would be rude to decline, so I suggested that we might save them for the end of the meal, and he nodded approvingly. We placed the betel nuts to the sides of our plates.

AN INTERJECTION: After forty-odd hours of travel, I mostly wanted a water bottle and a bed -- not a potentially cancer-causing betel nut.

Midway through the meal, somebody passed me a dish and I heard something fall onto the floor. Could that have been my betel nut? A little while later, I noticed my betel nut was indeed missing. Hmm. I glanced around the floor but didn't see my missing nut. Maybe the whole thing would be forgotten. Maybe nobody would notice.

Wrong. On a trip to the sink, Fiona's sister-in-law came across my missing betel nut half way across the kitchen floor. Damn. But no -- she didn't link it to me, instead she delivered it back to Brother, chiding him him in Taiwanese (presumably for carelessly loosing his nuts). Saved!

Wrong again. Once we couldn't fit any more food into our stomachs (wo bao le! wo bao le!), the table noticed that my betel nut was missing. "I think it fell on the floor..." I admitted. No matter, Brother pulled out another. He said something in Taiwanese. Fiona translated -- "he says you'd better enjoy them, he doesn't give many away."

I stalled for time by asking questions.
"Will I be able to sleep if I chew this? Isn't it a stimulant?"
Nonono, they said, it would just warm me up.
Joe and I looked at each other across the table. He was holding his betel nut between his thumb and forefinger, about halfway to his mouth.
"So I just chew it?" I asked.
"Just chew, don't swallow."
"So I spit? Where should I spit? What do I spit in?"
Somebody handed me a small clear plastic cup.
Great.
Joe and I eyed each other again.
"How long do I chew? Until the juice is all gone?"
"Like gum, just chew, spit, chew! As long as you want!" They were excited about this.

I placed the wad gently in my mouth on the left side. Joe did the same. We bit down. We chewed. Our eyes got big. We spat. We chewed.

Everybody in the room was anxiously awaiting our reactions. After about fifteen seconds of chewing, Joe said "it's getting warm."

Sure enough, my mouth was beginning to radiate heat. I spat another gush of orange juice into my cup. Joe did the same. Fiona began laughing. "Your teeth are orange!" I'm sure they are, I thought.

The heat spread rapidly down into my neck, across the right side of my chest, and the whole way down my right arm. My fingers were glowing within seconds. My whole face felt warm and red. I looked over at Joe and he looked like he might be about to break into a sweat. "It's really hot" he said. It wasn't spicy at all -- it wasn't like that -- it was like plugging in an electric blanket and then swallowing it.

I chewed a little more until I thought I might have a heart attack and then spat the entire wad into my cup. Joe held out for another minute or two before letting go of his wad, too. We asked for water so we could rinse and spit, cleaning out our mouths.

Fiona's sister was laughing. I told her how quickly the heat had traveled through my blood and how quickly I was cooling down since I'd spat out the nut. "Yes," she said in broken English, "your heart will beat very very hard. The juice -- some people die if swallow juice the first time. Heart stops!"

"What?" I cried. "We could have died if we'd swallowed the juice by accident?" She thought my dismay was very funny. "Yes, first time, maybe die!" Fiona agreed with her. The juice wasn't the only danger she and Fiona went on to tell us: any betel nuts harvested growing upside down would kill us, too. Unless you harvest the nuts yourself, you can't be sure you're getting nuts that grew in the right direction.

Well, Joe and I lived, and -- needless to say -- we haven't had any betel nuts since.

Oh -- and traffic jelly... when we got caught in traffic, Fiona said hesitantly "we are in traffic... traffic..."
"Jam," Joe said, "a traffic jam."
"That's right," said Fiona, "not jelly."

I made it!

Here I am in Taiwan... All well, all fine, I'm tiiiiiiired and Joe won't let me take a nap....

Goodbye!

Well, my life is opening to adventure again. After 17 months in Corvallis, I've decided to take a break. On Thursday I'm heading to Taiwan to visit brother Joe for two months. Then back to Corvallis for a few months to straighten up business, and then off to the east coast with Muley in tow.

In the past I've enjoyed writing sensational missives about the scrapes I've barely avoided (or completely fallen into). I think my previous adventures were probably a bit more prone to accident than this one may be. Without 72-hour train rides, Indian monsoons, interjecting cowboys, and wilderness escapades, this time round may seem rather tame. I have a room leased ahead of time (thanks to Joe and Fiona); I have money in my bank account (thanks employment); I'll know somebody where I'll be going (my brother); I have a return ticket home already paid for (I won't get stranded). With such fail-proof arrangements, what could possibly go wrong?

So -- despite my wisdom this time round -- I hope my dispatches will be as entertaining as in the past. As long as Joe doesn't keep too close an eye on me, I'm sure I will find my way into some new and exciting (or, at the very least, bewildering) situations. Furthermore, I'll be attempting to practice my basic Mandarin, so at least we can look forward to my endless self-embarrassment.

Until next week...
~April