Category: Personal

I just bought my fourth burner in the five years I’ve had my G3. I seem to be eternally cursed by bad burners and bad Firewire cases. The last lump of poo was a Pioneer drive in a very bulky EZ-Quest case which never properly burned DVDs and totally shut down after my year warranty expired. I took it to my friendly, local computer fix-it shop and they had a look at it. First they thought it was the drive, so they swapped out the drive for a new one and…that didn’t work either, so they thought it was the case. In came the new case…and the old drive didn’t work, so I had to get a new case and drive. Jiminy Christmas.
So, now I have what you see above, a Metal Gear case with a Plextor PX-712 12x DVD burner (48x CD) inside. It doesn’t use a fan (great!) and is all lit up with blue LEDs, making it look like a pimpmobile. It makes all sorts of low noises when it starts up (not in a bad way), some sounding like a secret radio transmission. I’m putting it through its paces as we speak.
We’ll see how long it lasts. Seeings how much I paid, it better last several years, thank you.

Yaa boo sucks! Do I really have to go back to the United Fundamentalist States of Bush? Nooooooooo!
Apparently so.
Fortunately, the typhoon cleared out today, suddenly veered off east, leaving only drizzle and dark clouds, but no winds. My last breakfast: a McDonalds Sausage McMuffin (not my choice). Boo!
The sisters all came with us in a similar rented bus, and at the airport, at our last lunch, which was some surprisingly good shabu shabu from the food court. By the time I was done with the razor thin slices of pork, the broth was delicious and complex, and the noodles that I emptied into the soup were tender. Yum!
At airports there’s not much to do. Either you hang with the people who have come to see you off, and chit chat pointlessly, or you just go through and wait for the flight. We chose something between the two. Lynn and Mike had enough frequent flyer miles on China Airlines, that they bumped their return flight up to business class. Me, I’ve never been on anything but peasant class.
Jessica and I did get a spare seat between us, but I could never seem to take proper advantage and fall asleep properly. I didn’t watch any of the movies on the way back, but I did finish off Days Between Stations, the Kerry issue of the Believer, and the entire BFI book on Eyes Wide Shut, so it was at least productive. We never saw Lynn and Mike the whole flight.
They took off for Phoenix, and we for Santa Barbara, where my Dad picked us up. Home was chilly and fresh and suddenly smelled just like it had been when we moved in two years ago. So we’re back and bloody hell, it’s like we never left.

Well, today I hung out with my friend and Taipei denizen William. We’ve known each other for a few years after being on the Pizzicato Five mailing list together and trading stuff. Pretty much everybody I’ve met from the list over the years has turned out to be a decent fellow (and they’re usually fellows).
Despite being an intelligent being, anytime I set off on my own into Taipei, the sisters all worry that I’m going to get lost using the MRT. Not to worry, though finding the Starbucks at Taipei Main Station that William told me to meet him took some doing. By the time I did so I was covered with sweat. First, William hooked me up with some CDs of WMFU weirdness, then we set off for a day of art gallery walking and such. The weather by now was dreadful, and trying to turn our umbrellas inside out. First stop was MOCA Taipei, which is housed in something like an old schoolbuilding, all redbrick and classroom sized galleries.
Taiwan is in a national crisis of identity, and this is borne out by so much of the art I saw today and on other visits. Asking “What Is Taiwan” is up there with asking “What is Real” (asked over at the Fine Arts Museum).
At MOCA, many of the rooms were devoted to “The Rumor of China Towns: Chinese Architecture 2004”. Not a particularly impressive collection: most of it seemed to be asking the question, “What do we do with these old cardboard architectural models from school?” and rooms full up of interesting junk. Other rooms tried to artify or glamorize photos of awful modernist concrete blocks (Corbu, Bauhaus, damn you). The question I asked William: “Would you actually want to live here?”
A larger room featured stacks of bound newspapers on their side, on top of which we were invited to walk in our stocking feet. I don’t know what this actually meant, but it did feel a bit like quicksand. Another room had a full apartment made out of string and wire. In another, molded shapes in styrofoam and plaster suggested we assume yoga postures to then watch respectively aligned monitors. The molded body shapes were obviously not made for this tall, rather bloated Westerner.
So…nothing made much of an impression, all apart from the building itself which had that proper mix of warmth and non-intrusiveness that befits gallery space. Oh, and the bag lockers, which were named after artists and movements, and not numbered. Where else could you store your satchel in “Existentialism”?
Continuing on…we took a train to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Most of the museum was devoted to “Do You Believe In Reality?” curated by Barbara Vanderlinden and Amy Huei-hua Cheng.
The theme is so open ended (citizen’s rights and the reality offered by each perspective) that pretty much any contemporary artist could be represented here. I didn’t feel any grand question being asked.
Therefore it was still down to the art. Ones that stood out:
Jeanne Van Heeswijk/Rolf Engelen/Siebe Thissen/Frans Vermeer/Innbetween’s appropriation of postered walls from the streets of Amsterdam, turned into shelters. Mostly I grooved on seeing the two-inch thick layers of years of plastering up concert posters. Like cutting through substrata.
David Claerbout’s “Vietnam, 1967, Near Duc Pho” a video manipulation of a still by Hiromishi Mine of a caribou aircraft split in two and falling to earth, where craft and landscape evolve over time differently.
Yang Fu-Dong’s “Dai Hao and Man Te”, a small labyrinth of white walls and fluorescent bulbs that centers into a room with a projector playing a 12 minute 35mm film of two guys on the beach. Meant to “metaphorically depict the ungraspable nature of experience and the fragmentary state of memory” (raspberries), I liked it for its compact 35mm projector, the likes of which I’ve never seen.
Raqs Media Collective’s “The Wherehouse Project,” a series of modern archaeological artefacts (read, interesting objects culled from houses). I liked it for the reason William did: it was like going through a very cool flea market.
Agnes Varda’s “Patautopia” a video tryptich of old potatoes, now turned into weird and beautiful tubular flowers.
Anri Sala’s “time after time,” a slowly metamorphosing video of a horse standing on a bridge? a beach? a housing project? while the camera goes in and out of focus in the low light.
Down below in the very large space, there were three rooms devoted to Ton Yang-tze and Ray Chen’s “Realm of Feelings–A Dialogue of Calligraphy and Space”, one a large empty room filled with projections of animated Chinese calligraphy (and then once we entered, our distorted shadows); another room containing three large canvases of calligraphy, but only attainable by transvering a small series of paths separated by low tables of black glass (acting as great reflectors of the art); and finally a circular room filled with sand around which a calligraphic poster spiraled out.
William and I took a small lunch-like break in the museum, which boasts a truly paltry selection of hot food. That I chose a hot dog should give you a clue. Regardless, we had a long chat, mostly about film (Tsai Ming Liang’s “Goodbye Dragon Inn” being one of them) and what to do with my unfinished experimental film “Gone When Police Got There.”
Then we took a MRT to our final location, the Taipei Film House, which is currently showing a Documentary Film Festival. It also features an Eslite bookstore with a film and cinema theme. Joy! I wound up getting two DVDs: one a documentary on Taiwanese music, Viva Tonal, on Willaim’s recommendation, and one of the Shaw Brothers reissues, Sex For Sale, which looks to be kooky and campy.
While deciding on buying these, a gentleman approached me, a bit nervous to speak in English. He explained that the end of the year is coming up and he still needs to get “purchase points” on his Eslite(?) credit card or he’ll have to pay a large fee. So could he buy these on his card and I just give him the money? I thought at first it was a scam of some kind, but he was on the up and up. If he’d hung around longer, he could have gotten more points for buying the BFI book on “Eyes Wide Shut” and Jonathan Romney’s book on Atom Egoyan, which I wound up paying for in cash.
William took one photo of me with the Holga (the excellent toy camera with two manual controls) and then we walked back to the station to bid each other adieu. I called Jessica and they said they were out on the town and to meet them at City Hall station. I did so and all I heard on the way home was the excellent lunch they had and that I had missed. Jessica was trying to make me regretful, I guess, but no dice, despite having a hot dog for lunch.
We spent the rest of the evening back at the sisters’, with an occasional run to get food and drink downstairs (more watermelon juice for Mike and me). Not to mention the bloody packing, incorporating all the stuff we bought in Taipei the first couple of days.
And would we be taking off in the middle of a typhoon? It looked like it…

All the news today has been about this bloody typhoon that is heading our way and supposedly will be right on top of us on the day we take off from the airport. Lovely. But in anticipation of that, today was pre-typhoon weather. That is, all the crap gets blown out of the air and Chia-yi showed what it looks like on a sunny, scattered clouds day without a haze of carcinogens hovering overhead. It was also bloody hot.
Last night we spent packing, and both Mike and myself were faced with a similar problem: where do we put all this stuff? In one case I have the new water boiler, still in the box (and with socks and fragile teapots packed inside) and everything packed around it.
This morning, the family took us out to the stinky tofu place down the road, the one with the best hot sauce in the area, but blast it all, it was closed. We continued walking, until we came to another former neighbor who had a very popular duck noodle stand. Now she’s made enough money to expand that into a bigger shop. The noodles are still lovely and the thick broth is still as multi-layered as I remembered it. Mike and I also sought out some watermelon juice on the way back, probably this trip’s most popular drink.
There was some last minute shenanigans over taking gifts back. Mama wanted Jessica to take back some “long life noodles” for a family friend in Santa Barbara, but the noodles weighed a ton, so we halved it. Mother and daughters hid money in each others’ bags/beds to help each other out. That’s the Chinese way…
We caught a coach up to Taipei and two films played on the way up: Four Chefs and a Feast, one of those slapdash New Year’s comedies from Hong Kong about three chefs trying to recreate a famous end-o-WWII banquet (the fourth chef was their mentor); and “Needing You…” starring Andy Lau and Sammi Cheung in some sort of romantic comedy or other. It had no subtitles, so I didn’t really know what was going on. Sammi Cheung is cute, tho’. As is Wu Chien-lien, who plays one of the chefs in the first film–she has a Anita Mui thing going on…
By the time we got to Taipei, the weather had soured and was now dark grey and drizzly, while at the same time being oppressive and humid. So on one hand I had to wear my jacket, on the other it was really to hot for such a thing.
We took a taxi, dragged three bloody heavy suitcases up four flights of stairs and waited for the sisters to return home, which they eventually did.
We took a train back out to visit Berry’s company, where she is main packaging and grpahics designer. The company is called UCI, and they make USB storage devices, MP3 players, and an upcoming movie player which will probably arrive after iPod movie busts out on the scene. Berry works in at a desk in the corner of the small office, which is two floors away from Rock Records, one of Taiwan’s main record publishers. She has all the cool goodies–all the other desks looked rather bland. The boss, a rather unassuming youngish guy, gave us a little tour, and let us play with the movie viewer and even asked us, the two Americans, for input.
We decided then to walk to one of the night markets and saw some nice upmarket areas of Taipei (at least some with architecture that pleased my eye. At the night market (the most popular one, I’ve forgotten the name, but we’ve visited once already this trip), I tried a refried donut (a donut thrown back in the deep fryer and then sprinkled with sugar) and it wasn’t as horrifically greasy as I’d imagined it would be. I also had some sticky pork rice and some herbal jelly drink.
Taxi back. Called my friend William to arrange tomorrow’s day out, and then watched some bad HK movie called The Three Lusketeers, which starred Euro-looking Simon Lui as a lothario trying to scam millions out of one of his father’s old Filipino mistresses. Quite unfunny yet compulsively watchable, for some strange reason. Those strange reasons included Gigi Lai…

All week I’ve been trying to get everyone to go see a movie while we’re here, especially one that probably won’t open in the States. Currently, the Japanese movie Quill is the film of choice and today, after much lazing about at home, we went out to see it.
That is, all except Lynn, who a) didn’t want to see it, b) was still recovering from a slight cold, and c) was going to be taken out today by Mama to the fortune tellers up in the forest nearby. I know that sounds more interesting than seeing a film, at least blogwise, but I didn’t get to go.
We got there at about 3:30, but the ticket counter told us the 3:10 showing hadn’t started yet, so we jumped in. This cinema is tiny (maybe 50 seats at most), the screen is poor, and the sound is hollow, but compared to some of the Taiwanese viewing experiences my friend William has had, acceptable. “Quill” is a cute and often sad little movie about a seeing-eye dog, and I’ll write more soon about it on my movie blog. (BTW, “Straight! Go!” is one of the commands the Japanese owner uses to control his seeing eye dog.)
Afterwards, we walked a little ways home, and stopped at Barista coffee to just relax and talk about dogs and such. We also stopped at a computer store while Jessica mulled over buying a 17 inch LCD monitor for work. One thing about computer and electronics stores is that unknown or hinky-sounding brands get major shelf space alongside major companies. But with the side-to-side comparisons (all monitors were playing the same HQ slideshow), it was obvious the best monitor was by Samsung.
Later in the evening, Baba took us out to one final night market on the west side of town, and getting a little lost while driving there. How long has he lived here, we joked. I ate some “oya-zen”–an oyster omelet draped in a red sauce. S’good.
Tonight, after packing, I backed up all our photos onto two CDRs, so they wouldn’t be trapped on mama’s computer. On the TV was a long documentary about the worldwide transvestite beauty contest, and they were following Taiwan’s entry, who looked a bit like Namie Amuro, but not in a good way. The cameraman and host soon lost interest and instead pursued Miss Thailand, who looked so much like a cute japanese idol it was disturbing. There were no telltale signs of “Mr. Lady”-ness about her. Mike was rattled. France’s entry, however, looked like a stringy old dude in a dress.

At last this morning I was able to get something on my wish list: a hairwash at a salon down the road. At salons here you can request a hair wash and only that for something like $4. For 30 minutes a young woman will soap up your hair and give you a long scalp massage, take ages rinsing it, then make a fuss over drying and styling it. Even someone like me, with not much hair to work with, can enjoy the treatment. It’s very relaxing, and near the end, two women were working on styling my hair, which for today was spiked all over like a modest punk.
Jessica and I had brekkie at this nearby vegetarian noodle shop, which had plenty of Buddhist posters all around (most vegetarian food here is linked to Buddhism). Mama is pretty vegetarian, and eats here a lot. She still knows how to cook meat for the rest of us, though.
The parents took us out later to a roadside antique stall, where you never know what will be on sale, from the exquisite (a lovely chest of draws in ancient wood) to the utter shite (cheap plastic tchotches)
We had a last minute shopping excursion today, taking in Carrefour, where we bought a new water boiler (exactly the same as the one we’re replacing), and then downtown, where I bought tons of cheap, ex-rental DVDs for about a dollar each.
One of these was Stephen Chow’s “From Beijing with Love,” his parody/appropriation of James Bond. Jessica suggested we watch it when we got home, which we did, with only Mike and Ken really staying around to watch (and Jessica, of course). Mama was in and out of the kitchen, Lynn was sleeping.

Today the family took us all swimming at a pool/spa about a mile away from the house. Mama goes here every other day and does 30 laps in their olympic size pool, as her way of keeping healthy. More on that later. Only recently Baba has decided to occasionally tag along. One day last month, when Mama was out of town, Baba decided to go swim alone, and being slightly cheap, didn’t want to pay for a locker key.
When he came back to the locker room, his clothes were gone! He had to walk home in just his swimming trunks, then realized that he’d locked himself out and now had no key. He eventually got in through an upper window, but the story is now “legend” around the family.
None of this happened today down at the pool. The center contains a lap pool right inside the main doors (the olympic butts up against the half-olympic length pool, the former much colder than the latter). Another section contains a large spa, with all sorts of ways to treat the body, from bubbling, submerged chairs, hot whirlpools colored with herbal remedies, and saunas, to steam rooms and a series of punishing hoses meant to massage the muscles. One hose sent a stream shooting out and down 50 ft into the pool. I watched an older man stand in its path, the jet pounding his back, sending a spray arcing out like a peacock’s plumage. When it was my turn, I found I could only stand in the way of this jet for two seconds. The pressure was up there with riot hoses–it felt like a knife in my back, and the first attempt knocked me off my feet. Less harsh, but still pouding, was a series of
hoses that blasted straight down onto the person, who was forced to lay on their stomach helplessly and maneuver the body into the most massage-worthy path. Outside there was a water park, but being the off-season, its canals and slides were all dry.
Mama challenged me to a lap in the Olympic pool, but I soon found out how knackering this was, and how out of condition I am. She lapped me before I was even half way. How embarrassing.
Much much later in the evening, Jessica and I went out by ourselves (with the help of Ken, who dropped us off) to the row of coffee shops that line a rather upmarket street to the north of town. We were surprised to see our favorite shop was still there: “Five Cent Driftwood House,” designed by a female architect/owner Hsieh Li-shiang from bricks and huge pieces of driftwood she’s collected over the years, as well as big blocky wood tables, stone sculptures, and other pieces of ephemera. There are two other versions in Tainan and Taichung, both slightly different.
Apparently made without a blueprint, it has all the warmth and homey feeling that most structures in Taiwan lack. It points a way forward for Taiwan’s architects, not that everything should be made out of driftwood. All their coffee pots, mugs, and plates are charming and hand-made too. The coffee was excellent and the free side of mochi (rice cake rolled in peanuts) was the single best mochi I’ve ever had, seriously. The texture was closer to jellified yogurt than rice. At last by ourselves, Jessica and I had a nice relaxing conversation, mostly about architecture. Ken came and picked us up and getting home I found that the Ali G movie “Ali G Indahouse” was on HBO, so I stayed up for that. Not exactly good, but oh well.

We all slept in late today, but as it was the sisters’ last day here (a Sunday), it was decided to spend this afternoon at the farm, having a barbeque. All except Jessica, who had a lunch date with a high school friend of her’s. So off I went with Mike and everybody out to the farm where a makeshift grill was set up over a makeshift bbq made out of a car wheel hub. Baba also had a steamer/griller set up into which we put a chicken. If you want to cook chickens here, you better get ready to dealing with the whole chicken. They come with head and feet intact. Mike suggested we stuff garlic and basil under the skin instead of inside as everybody else was ready to do. I bent back the legs and stuffed them inside the body cavity, which is a yoga postion that a chicken can do only in death. The chicken was then sat upright on a spit and lowered into the pot and cooked very quick. Thirty minutes later I was having some lovely roast chicken.
We didn’t stay too long and Ken stopped by to help cook some pork on the grill. He drives the family car now, and drives it three times as fast as Baba. When he took us home, we actually hung about 20 minutes before the rest turned up. After the sisters left, I walked over to Carrefour (the French supermarket chain is big here) with Mike and Lynn to look around. Upon returning, Jessica was finally back from her eternal lunch. But then, bleedin’ hell, another friend of hers turned up and we were stuck in the house a little bit longer. We got out finally just in time to get downtown and pick up my new glasses. Woo-hoo! Images coming soon. Unfortunately, this computer I’m doesn’t have anything approaching batch processing of images and so things are taking longer than I thought.

I had a dream that I was walking near Alameda Park near my home and an old lady was moving out of the large home she had owned for years. She had stacked all her goods in a tower that looked more like a sculpture than something waiting for the moving van. Inside was a working Super 8 Projector [in real life I still need one of these] and I was hoping she was throwing it out.
Not much of a dream, but there was more to it I can’t recall well, and the Jenga-like tower of goods was fascinating. There was even a working reel-to-reel inside.
Anyway, we got woken up by family members who had already showered and dressed and were on their way to the hotel’s dining room for the complementary breakfast. So we had to rush and get down there half awake. The breakfast buffet was okay, though pretending you are offering sausages when they are Vienna from a can is pushing it.
Jessica and I took a little stroll while waiting for our tourbus to come and get us. There was a path that led up into the hills and for a while all we could hear was the rumble of a nearby hotspring, a bird with a very particular call, and far off sounds of people and farming. Suddenly I was reminded of Spirited Away, mostly because of the steam rising from the buildings all around and the vertiginous nature of the whole village.
We were pretty high up to begin with, but our busdriver took us higher and higher until we got to a place called Chingjing Farm. Being so high up, the surrounding architecture quoted Swiss chalet, and the meadow itself was something that the Taiwanese see little of: rolling hills of green grass (a bit yellow in November’s dry season) and sheep. And it was not so quiet, as tourists were spilling all over the hills, fully enjoying the grass. Teenagers sat around in circles, children rolled down it, parents hiked up and down. And inbetween them roamed sheep of all shapes and ages, being fed and sometimes ridden by the humans. At the top of this hill was a sort of assault course for kids–ropes and log bridges and swings and monkey bars–on which Mike and I promptly embarrassed ourselves.
Roaming among the sheep and lambs (awwww!) was a real Australian sheep shearer who told us he’d been working here for seven years. (By choice, I assume.)
We kept walking and came to a honey farm, where eager beekeepers were pulling out the hive slats, smoking off the bees, and then spinning the hive in a centrifuge to extract the honey. I tried some of this honey straight from the spigot and damn if it wasn’t the freshest thing I’ve ever eaten. I bought a bottle right there. I don’t usually eat honey, but recently I tried a cup of plain yogurt with honey mixed in and it was slappingly good.
More walking and we reached the top of the hill and, not surprisingly, there was Chiang-Kai-Shek standing there in bronze. Back at the LuShan Hotsprings we had been shown one of his holiday houses (in a Japanese style…some nationalist!) and now here he was on one of his hiking excursions.
Then 500 steps led down, made of a lovely dark mahogany-style wood, to a vegetable stall selling huge fruit–Asian pears over 8 inches in diameter–and something called “honey apples” which contain compacted “golden sections” inside.
Lunchtime and the bus pulled us up into a Swiss style food court where we saw two signs of “civilization”: a Starbucks and a 7-11. Lunch was eel and rice and veggies, served from a stall below a sign that said “You Have To Eat It!”–which to me sounds like a future reality game show.
Afterwards much more driving and at last we came to Ao-Wan-Da National Forest. A full hike around this area of grassy plains, deep woods, and a large shale-based river takes about 90 minutes we were told, and what everybody comes to see are the oak trees that are up so high on this tropical island that they change color through the seasons.
We walked for about 30 minutes, and there was great shale cliffs near us, as well a series of aqueducts diverting water from somewhere. In one of the passing river there was still detritus from 921, a series of twisted ribars and concrete. How hard would this be to move? Oh well. Some ways along, returning hikers told us that, dammit, the oaks weren’t red yet, so that was used as a reason to turn back. It was nice being up in the mountains here with the air so fresh. Too bad the cities are all smoggy.
A long bus drive back followed and we had only a few stops left. One the “Center of Taiwan” a little marker in Nantou that was decreed to be the geographic center some decades back. The real center is probably somewhere halfway up a cliff, but this’ll do.
The other stop was along a road known for its scantily clad Betel nut girls. A few years back, the government tried to clamp down on these betel nut sellers, found near all main service road. For the most part they complied–now they dress in go-go outfits and short skirts. But this road is more like the days before the ban, and the girls wear very small bikinis. So the bus driver set up a contest: he would stop three times, one each for Baba, Mike, and myself, and the rest of the bus could vote on who got the cutest girl. Well my girl was kinda cute and certainly busty, but I think Mike won for getting the girl with the most exposed flesh.
After a stop at a service area, we made our way back to Chia-yi, where the karaoke was busted out again and I wound up singing “The Girl From Ipanema.”
When we got back, Ken was there to greet us and soon take us out to the night market at the back of Carrefour, which was now three times as busy as the other night we went.

When Mama and the daughters came to visit us in Santa Barbara in early January, Mama realized that she had somehow “failed” on all my previous visits to Taiwan to show the country’s beauty. So for this visit, Berry (mostly) arranged a two-day trip for all of us to go on to take in the sites. They rented a small bus and a normal-sized bus driver to take us into the mountains north-east of Chia-yi.
So off we went at eight in the morning on a typical gloomy day. When we hit the main motorway, Mama busted out with the karaoke (mandatory equipment on all tourist buses) and Baba entertained us with his particular brand of caterwauling.
First stop was a tea shop a little bit up in the mountains. When the Taiwanese (or, from experience the Japanese) say “countryside” they mean anything that doesn’t have a mass transit system. Malibu would be countryside, for example. Anyway, this was “the countryside” even though there were plenty of convenience stores and tons of political posters for the upcoming election (total number of candidates: 11…or more). We were given a little teamaking demo by the co-owner of the shop, and given some shortbread cookies made from green tea (with actual leaves in the middle instead of jam). At first I thought this was going to be a typical Asian road trip, where every stop is some sort of shop. But the co-owner boarded our bus and directed us to a tea farm up in the hills.
The tea plant is not the most amazing thing to see up close, not like seeing an orchard or anything. From a distance they have the orderly look of suburban shrubs, and up close they are bushes of dark leaves. The mountain air is clear, fresh, and free of carbon monoxide, but nothing smells like green tea. A small monorail goes up the side of the mountain to carry buckets of picked tea back and forth. I didn’t get to see it in action, though. Today was the workers’ days off, so we were the only ones walking through the rows.
Next up was a leftover of the “921” earthquake in 1999, the 7.6 rumble that destroyed quite a lot of Taiwan and changed the landscape a lot. In towns that saw lots of crappy buildings crumble, they have quickly rebuilt and put up newer, still crappy buildings. Here, in the back of an alfalfa farm, they’ve left the destruction and can take you around with a megaphone-bearing tourguide. The site is a traintrack that was twisted beyond recognition. At one point the earth raised twenty-five feet, leaving the rail hanging in the air. Right nearby a section of rail was bent into a 90 degree angle. Near this iron pretzel is a large electric pylon that is now imitating the Leaning Tower (don’t worry it’s disconnected from the grid).
Of course, after this tour, they take you to the gift shop to sell you plums. Typically, I found, the gift shop sells nothing related to the actual site. A twisted, unworkable toy train set would be fascinating here, no?
Onward! And off we went further into the woods, stopping at Jiji Station. If you’ve seen Hou Hsiao Hsien’s Dust in the Wind, you’ve seen this station. Unfortunately, it’s now a bit commercialized, trying to look like some Swiss Railway concoction, with the usual plums on sale in the gift shop among other tat. The train station is still working, though. Nearby we saw another victim of the 921 earthquake, a fairly recently built temple that had collapsed on itself. This be would be oh-so-tragic if it weren’t for the fact that a) it was completed one year before the quake and b) the collapse was the fault of half-assing the construction (you can bet there were kickbacks involved).
I began to wonder if just leaving shit around and claiming it’s a notable evidence of the tragic earthquake is just easier than cleaning it up.
We then arrived at “Sun Moon Lake,” one of the major lakes in Taiwan, and one with a horizon that disappears into the mist…and the Taiwanese like it that way. The nearby town offers numerous restaurants and hotels, all quite ugly, and a harbor that is much better looking. We took lunch here in an average restaurant, the defining feature being the owner’s daughter’s pet: a potbellied pig. No, he wasn’t on the menu, and he had the run of the place.
We walked on the harbor for a while, which floats up and down with the tide, then continued on again.
I was told before the trip we’d be visiting a rice winery, but I was very disappointed, as it turned out to be one large gift shop surrounded by other, smaller gift shops. Most of what was available to sample was food, as well. Blimey. Rice wine popsicles. Cakes made of wine. Plums pickled in wine. Even an ointment made of wine, which a helpful assistant sprayed on my neck. My neck was on fire for the following hour. Wine samples were restricted to about a teaspoon and were mostly weak. And no “winery tour,” but rest assured there was a remnant of the earthquake outside, a busted storage tank with accompanying concrete girder, now reset in a water-garden display. Actually, you could have passed it off as post-modern sculpture. The place sold good egg tarts, though, creamy and with a lovely puff pastry crust. No wine inside either.
Just as I was thinking the trip was mostly going to be these type of places, we really went into the mountains, taking a winding path until we were thousands of feet up, all that was between us and a sheer cliff sometimes being only a concrete lip less than a foot high. And still there were flags and posters for this election’s candidates. Imagine being in the middle of an American National Forest and seeing a Bush/Cheney card on a tree.
As the sun went down, we hit our final destination for the day: Lu-Shan hot springs. The town exists on either side of a steep gorge through which a river rushes. The side where all the hotels and hot springs are can only be reached by a pedestrian bridge that spans the gorge, and it wobbles a bit let me tell you. There are several hotels on this side and food stalls that sell food that is boiled on the spot in various pools being pumped full of sulpherous water.
Our hotel is centered around the many pools it offers which you can use even if you’re not staying there (though what you may be doing in the area otherwise is strange). There’s a series of whirlpools, a “waterfall” that you can stand under, a series of jet hoses that massage your back with high water pressure. There’s a lap pool, a sauna, a steam room, and the usual spa amenities. First thing I did wasn’t swim but sign up for a 90 minute full body massage.
This turned out to be quite different from the ones in the States. First of all I didn’t have to strip down too much. Instead of tinkly new age music, the window was open, so I could hear the house music from the “activity pool,” the drunken karaoke from the lobby area, the constant white noise from the water, and the chattering from the people passing by the window (and looking in).
But the massage was gnarly, all pressure points. I lay on my side first and the masseur (yes, I know, bad luck, eh) started pressing down on my jaw and then my neck. Oh man, it was exquisite pain. First one side, then the other, then my back, then–laying on my back–my stomach. The man was playing with fire there, I tell you.
By the time I was out, most everybody had finished swimming, but Jessica was still waiting for me and so we tried the lap pool, which was excellent fun, especially as I’m still trying to find a foolproof way of teaching Jessica to swim. By the way, Taiwanese swim fashion judging from this visit is based upon outfits your grandma used to wear. In her not so risque but still small two piece, Jessica had the effect that the first bikini must have made in the ’50s.
By the end of the night I was pretty exhausted. Our room opened out onto a tributary of the river, leaving us with nothing to do but fall asleep to the sound of falling water.