Well, after a busy weekend in Taipei and Taroko gorge, things settled down a little at our home in Song-Pu. Rice paddy walks in the morning, butterfly valley hikes (which has very few butterflies visible when it is pouring rain, apparently!), tea farm visits and a rafting trip ... floating while being pushed by a motorboat style rafting...filled the days. when Friday hit, we strapped ourselves into the rental car and took off to the south. Crystal had to work so I drove with her parents to Taitung and waited there for her to arrive on the 10:40pm train. The drive down was nice, rainy and chilled, but beautiful and we got to see some of the sights along the way. The bridge...8 Arch Bridge...and Water Running Up were the highlights, with a brief stop at a fishing harbour to see what was for sale from the oceans depths.
Then, in the morning.....to the ferry (and another stunning fish market and auction) and to Green Island!
The sun came out, the heat was felt, and we had a grand time. We rented a golf cart for four - so cool to drive around the island...slow, but a good ride - and did a lap of the island, checked out tide pools, hiked along the rocky volcanic coast (which is actually the inside of an old volcano), played with some goats and got to see some of the islands graveyards, complete with paper money (yet to be burned...which is the usual case with the paper money, so we are a little confused as to why all the graves had un-burned paper money carefully placed all over them). Lunch, rice and veggies, and back on the road to the hot springs (one of only three salt-water hot springs known on this chunk of rock we call Earth). Bathing in the scorching water for a while, watching the evening approach, we decided enough was enough and got back on our sweet ride and headed to the hotel to change and then search out some dinner. Afterwards, we took some beer and sat by the ocean. The days heat blending into the evenings humidity and dampened temperatures, we called it a night.
The next day, to the prison! I wrote earlier about this but here goes a condensed version of Taiwan's most notorious moment in history - The White Terror. A long history of suppression and violence by the Chinese-led Taiwanese government, this moment in time was officially initiated by one lone incident on Feb 27, 1947 where the public took a stand against the government. Like any good totalitarian rule, the government responded with violence. On Feb 28, 1947...the day after...the worst massacre of Taiwanese history took place. The KMT government of China had wrested power of the island from Japan just recently, and immediately instilled a rule of fear and violence. Military rule followed, the imprisonment of intellectuals, artists, politicians and anybody who was willing to speak out against the government became normalized and executions of the most vociferous was standard practice. Green Island was the place where the political prison was built - Oasis Villa - and it was a brutal, horrid place, in violation of anything we consider human rights. Ill treatment, crowded cells, executions, torture and "re-education" to the communist mentality was demanded. If you could not be broken, you were killed. If you were broken, you were kept in a cell...broken.
Then, in the late '80s, the prison closed. Democracy came, the human rights violations were recognized officially and the people who survived the terror of the prison were free. Taiwan now hosts a fleeting number of political activists, political artists and leaders who were involved in this prison. And the prison stands now as a human rights memorial, telling a tale of the past. Walking into the cells, looking at the barbed wire fence and the gunners platforms, the execution grounds...it all seems unreal. Too much. But it was real, it did happen and it was only in the 80's that we humans recognized it as wrong. Humbling.
We made it to our ferry at 2:30pm, watched flying fish scurry above the ocean as we pushed our way back to Taitung. Then we hit the road...home. We saw some monkeys along the way, took a new road home (which is our new biking destination!) and made it home in time for dinner and packing. The next morning was goodbye time...a 7:48am train would take Crystals parents to Taipei for their flight.
The house is now quiet, and empty. So quickly things become normal, and now not having four people at dinner is weird. The shoe rack seems empty. A week went by so quickly, but it was packed with stuff that only Taiwan can offer, and we both hope that it was time well spent!
...until St. Lucia...ZaiJian!
