Dragon Boat Race

Well, for all the hoorah around the dragon boat races and the Dragon Boat Festival here, it is the world Cup that is taking centre stage in the big cities. In the south, where we are living, it is less pronounced and the festival is a higher priority (however, the population of the south is almost 100% indiginous and the Dragon Boat Festival is a Chinese holiday and memorial...soooo..some people are not too involved in it at all, but most are into it for the sake of entertainment but not for the historical perspectives).

This weekend we took to Taipei to take part in the Dragon Boat race (get 20 foreigners in a dragon boat for their first time ever and see how well they do...) and then to have a city weekend watching some soccer and taking in the signts yet unseen in Taipei.

The race was decent - Crystal couldnt make our first race, and there was not to be a second because we came in dead last, so she did not get to play - but not a momentous occasion as I was expecting. The crowd was into it, but it is a little slow to watch heat after heat of boats of strangers do the exact same thing. Definitely not worse than watching golf...nothing could be...but not an experience to draw me back to it next year. After the race and the group downtime, we decided to break for the afternoon, go our separate ways and then meet up at night for a soccer evening in a local pub. All turned out nicely. I spent way too much getting lost with a taxi driver or two, almost paid $30 CDN for a small bag of flax seed (always check the bill twice!!) and got a triathlon-worth of exercise walking around the city and dealing with the subway system stairs. Totally worth every minute, and I got to explore a brand new part of the city. Night brought a soccer game on a tv, a few beers of Taiwanese origin and some good time spent with other foreigners (which is a total rarity for us!!).

Saturday, Crystal made it to Taipei, we met up and hit the city. Leaving the confines of our hostel we meandered around town, did some errands and saw some sights. I had the glorious idea of visiting the epic (by reputation) National Palace Museum. I thought it would be cool. It wasnt. It was a boring, run of the mill exposition of Chinese crafts and historical artifacts. That in itself was highly interesting, but when it is splayed out in such a dry fashion and 6.4 trillion (yes, trillion.....I know, I know...) other Taiwanese people also want to look at the same stuff, it is hot, crowded, boring and just overall a bad experience. So, we left. We saw the main piece - a jade carving of a head of lettuce which is truly stunning - and wandered through most other displays but took in rather little. The enormity of the Chinese history is just oo large to drink in so quickly. anywho, we up and left, hit the road and made it back to the hostel area for dinner, another soccer game and some really expensive peanuts. Sunday, home home home!

National Palace Museum. Long history that is currently the source of much debate - many, all in fact, of the materials in this museum were once part of China and when the Sun-Yet Sen and Chiang Kai Shek exodus to Taiwan took place, they brought with them all sorts of treasured historical items. Now, China wants them back, but Taiwan has taken them as their own national materials. So, the battle goes on and on.

The days are drawing to a close here....less than two weeks left and so much still to do. Packing, goodbye dinners, planning for next year.... . It will get done, it has to, piece by piece. We also want to enjoy the time we have left in this part of Taiwan so we are taking available opportunities to poke our heads in random places and see what there is to see.

Yakou Attempt: Failure in the Mountains

You try and scooter through this...I dare you:

Bah!! Our grand plans of camping along the main ridgeline of Taiwan, hiking up the Guanshan trail and feasting our eyes on the rhododendrons and rocky peaks were foiled by a river. And a bridge....a bridge that was supposed to be there.

Our scooter and bags; all packed and nowhere to go! In the distance an engineers car is parked at the place where the roadway should be but immediately in front of the car is a chasm of impassable measure.

Earlier in the year a typhoon hit this area and totally flushed out the bridge, leaving behind a disconnected path from the ocean to the mountains. They worked hard...very hard...to repair a makeshift bridge and allow traffic to pass through. It was good, solid and it looked like they were just about to finish the final touches when.....the biggest rainfall of the year (non-typhoon rainfall) hits and just washes the entire thing away. Gone. Nothing left but a road with a huge gap in it. In the middle of nowhere, along windy mountainous roads, we were met with a flooded river and empty space between where we were, and where we wanted to be.


Shots of us posing by the river that washed away our plans; this river has done this many times before and the repairs at this point in the road are ongoing....an economic perpetual motion machine. Just last year we were almost stopped by the bridge damage but managed to carry our scooter over the blockade and drive through the muck and cobble. This time, no such luck. We would have needed a flying scooter, and we totally forgot ours at home.

Already hard at work. The government spares to time or money when repairing high mountain roadways. Villages that are disconnected need supplies and people need to travel these roads to get to work and to have access to hospitals, etc. So, when a typhoon hits, or like this situation a rare rainfall, and damage is done, landslide occur, etc, they snap to it and start fixing.

This, the only road that accesses the mountains this far south (and is the only access that the tribes and villages have to the resources and materials at sea level) is a main and highly important road. Main, not in the 4 land and nicely paved meaning, but main in the "it is the only game in town" for many people. It connects the East to the West via the high mountain pass called Yakou, and this is where we wanted to drive to and set up camp for the weekend. Wanted. This bridge, or lack thereof, changed all our plans.

C'est la vie...

On to our scooter....bags packed to the brim...up we went. About two hours into the drive, winding and twisting and pondering our evening tea among the misty mountains that make up the spine of Taiwan, we were stopped by the sound of machinery, trucks and one nice young worker who looked at us, looked at our scooter, looked at the road ahead and simply waved his hands to signify "no way". It wasnt a "if we drive slowly we can make it". It was a dead stop.



The End.



Torn between being angry at our luck, double checking the river to see if we could make it, laughing at our luck, double checking the river to see if we could make it, and just about every emotion one goes through when best laid plans are foiled...we turned around. Restlessly back down the mountains, to the main road and stopped.


This is a common setup in the mountains. Villagers have built tramways across difficult parts of the river and places where landslides often cut off road access. This way they can have materials sent up - food, supplies, tools, etc - and they can send down their crops and still make money while the road is out of action. It takes a team, a good lot of energy and even more time to make this work and to make it efficient, but they seem to do it well.

Loading up the basket to go up the mountains...

Now what?

Small hike. we fond a lovely little forgotten roadway to hike up that eventually led to a small little tea field nestled in the fog and mist. A nice quick walk to stretch our legs (but which required us to carry all our gear that was intended for the overnight camping trip - heaviest "afternoon walk" pack evah!) and then back on the scooter and down the mountain road.


Stopping aong the base of the tea field.

Stopping at the top! A small field of tea by Taiwan standards for sure, but a very remote and calm place to reach, especially as it was unexpected and followed such disappointment of the bridge issue. A bit of rain, not enough to drench us but enough to keep us moist. And a bit cooler.

Us, in said tea fields.

Back down to the scooter, I felt a wee bit heavier. Was I getting weaker? Hmmmm....perhaps I had a guest who was hitching a free ride down the mountain!

From tea fields we moved tomato fields. The tomato varieties in Taiwan are few, three that we have found, but are all delightfully delicious. We are never without during cherry tomato season...never!

Until the stomach started yelling, the food in our packs calling to us and we decided to give in.



Lunch. By a roadside natural hotspring. We bathed our legs in the scalding water and let the sun bathe our bodies. Then we ate our lunch. A peaceful lunch of defeat!


Lunch of water, veggies, fresh bread and...yes...tomatoes. A perfect mountain meal. Trevor sits on the steps that lead to the little spring where we soaked our (mostly unused at this point) legs.

Hot Springs. We drove to Antong Hot Springs, soaked our bones (for it was a rainy and chilly ride) and drank some nice (free) tea with the owner as we chatted about who we were, where we were from, and the basic conversations you have when you first meet somebody. Good tea - excellent, in fact - and a nice chinese lesson to boot. But when it was done, we saddled up on our scooter again and hit the same wall of indecision:

A cute little fella that we spotted as we left the hotsprings. Full of tea, totally relaxed, we headed back home...

Now what?

Hualien! The city! A far cry from the epic camping trip in the mountains we had planned, we ended up going to the city to study chinese and drink tea. Fun, but totally unexpected. We got a nice walk by the river and drank in some sunshine, got to taste a few tea varieties and snuck in a fun evening at a pub. All around good times. But what a different weekend than we had planned....wowzah!

So it goes in the mountains of Taiwan....the water rules everything and makes everything that we try to build temporary. You just have to try to get into the hills before nature grabs ahold and does its thing and halts your plans! Yakou will have to wait until next year....it will be there, but will the road. Time will tell...

This is actually us the Friday night before it all happened. Bags packed and minds full of expecctation, we stayed in a little hotel in Yuli - shaving off some 30 minutes of travel the next day of what should have been a 4+ hour scooter ride - and hit the town for dinner. Afterwards, back to the hotel and some rest...up early the next day and....you know the rest!

Less than a month to go...

We leave at the end of june, and then this will no longer be home.

Song-Pu Village (our home)

Parenthood: To love something so much, and to feed it only Guava Tree Leaves...

The back story: Working at four schools gives me a lot of face time with a lot of people. And every school has its own flavour (one is focused on aboriginal Taiwanese culture, where I learn a lot of mythology and cultural practices of the pre-Chinese Taiwanese; another is all about sports, where I get to dig into the athletic world of Taiwan; another is all about health and trying to discourage betel nut chewing and smoking, where I get to meet the forefront of the Taiwanese version of 'healthy schools'; and the final is...well...it is just a school that plugs through each day).

All grant me a different taste of Taiwan, a different perspective and are all growing experiences to say the least. But, the one that has the least as a school ("plug through each day") actually offers us the most. You see, employed there is a mastermind of Taiwan ecology. I mentioned in an earlier post that teaching there is akin to an ecology lesson each day. He tells me stories, explains plants, has an astounding butterfly conservatory on the school grounds, knows everything ("Teacher Wu.....I saw a bunch of red bulbs in the rice on the way to work today...what is it" BAM! A whole ecology lesson follows...what they are (snail eggs) and their place in the grand spectrum of Taiwan, nature and, yes, the rice (that they feed on to the chagrin of the farmers). Anywho, the point is that he is a wonderful man and a wonderful source of informaiton, and I try my best to fit a little lesson into each day. The hardest part to swallow - he asks me often "is Taiwan really beautiful...I have never left, I dont know. I have nothing to compare it to". He doesnt even realize, despite my assertions that the east coast of Taiwan is one of the prettiest, most diverse and profound places if you dig into the forests and ravines. He lives in the lap of biological luxury, tutors me on it, and has no idea. But he knows he loves it. And above all he loves to share it with me. And share it he does.

Working at his school has been aTaiwanese biology course, and, of course, there are the perks: earlier he gave us a butterfly chrysalis to baby sit until it sprang forth a fluttering butterfly, he gave me leaves to add to coffee (wild cinnamon!) from the grounds of the school and, just the other week, he gave us this to babysit:



This critter (Phyllium weswoodi or Phyllium ...?) is our little guest for a while. I think it is perhaps called the 'ghost insect' for the way that it wobbles when it walks around (a perfectly evolved mimic for a waving leaf on a real tree). The thing is, it only eats the leaves of the guava tree - and there are no guava farms nearby, nor are there any wild guava tress popping their heads around our house. The only source is at that one school - one lone tree sitting out front of my office door. So, each time I go there I pluck a weeks ration for this little critter (Herby) and stick it in some water and give it a nice big snack. The timing works out quite nicely as by the time the new rations arrive, the old ones are starting to dry up and die. Herby is super excited for the fresh feed!

And here are two pictures of the Flame Tree - so nammed because the flowers on the crown of the tree resemble, from a distance, a fire. It is actually quite a beautiful sight. The main road by our house is lines with these trees, and biking down a row of bright red topped trees with the big black seed pod and the juicy green leaves bordering you is quite nice. Quite nice indeed!

Down to Dawu Village: Ocean, vines and a machete

This weekend, sans camera (Crystal has it in St. Lucia), I took a venture to a place yet travelled by us - Dawu. This is a little village torn between being a fishing village (yet no port or dock to develop a "fish market" vibe) and a forgotten dot on the map. It is a place that people stop by to grab a tea, re-fill their betel nut bag, or make a bathroom stop. It is not a usual place to be destined towards. But, alas, I found myself destined to be there.

I had wanted for some time now to check the area out....a few hours south by train, on the coast and in the mountains all at the same time (I hiked in the mountains during the day and before I could lose that taste of a fresh piece of gum I was walking on the beach). It is not a vacation style place, but there is a beach that stretches for some 10 or more kilometers and at any given time will have 3, or if it is a good fishing day, 4, people on it. So, as I sat and stargazed at night with the waves lapping before me and the moon illuminating the cobble and sand beach, I was alone.

It was an investigation weekend mostly, poking around the woods, up the mountain and drinking water and tea non-stop to try to keep my liquid intake on par with my sweat output. It is a typical village of Taiwan, people are friendly and curious - a lot of staring and "hello" calls - but also one that typifies the level of development of Taiwan. Taiwan is developed in terms of technology and health care, but severely lacking in terms of environmental infrastructure and heightened poverty and all the things that go along with that. It is a, pardon the outdated phrase, a third world country in a first world suit.

An example, you ask? Every house in the village had a satellite dish, yet people still cook with fires and steel pots outside their house, fueled by driftwood. Can't afford neither propane or the necessary materials to make the propane into a workable stove, so the old way persists. Another? Pig blood. The main little supermarket/everything shop was a cozy little place with the owner scooping and mixing fresh pig blood from the pig that was that morning slaughtered (in the back of the shop, no less) in the middle of the store, as I walked around looking for a banana and some tea. Right beside the bags of vegetables and greens, and to the rear of him the remains of said pig. No separation between the slaughter, the cutting or the cleaning and the rest of the shop. Its the way it goes. So it goes. I never knew how bad freshly killed pig smelled. I confess that it is the worst smell I have encountered.

Anyway, the tiny town on the shores of the Pacific was a delight. Hot, sunny and I got to play in the mountains and swim in the ocean - both places which I had totally to myself. I got to try out my newly purchased machete as the vines in the woods, once I left the trail, were unrelenting. It was like they were actually trying to stop me from moving...not just being benign vegetative organisms. They were out to get me. So, with my machete swinging, sweat flying off me like shrapnel, eyes flickering from tree to tree looking for snakes, I trudged through the woods. Then I came to a cliff - almost sheer but spotted with trees and protruding roots. And I decided to try my hand at going down it. you see, at the bottom was a huge river valley that I wanted to cross, and this was simply the quickest way. It was sloped enough that I could look at it and think I could make it, but halfway down, I realized that was a mistaken thought. Then the decision....up...down....stay put....? With all the amassed strength and with I could call up I scrambled back up, trusting dead trees when I had no other choice and feeling an utter sense of relief when I got back to the top. Then, I remembered the vines. out of one battle, back into another!

It ended well, it was an amazing little jaunt into the woods and what make it even more spectacular is that once I got back on the main trail there was a clear view of the ocean. Glittering blue and jade, an endless vista of Pacific water. And that was as good as any of a time to take a break and drink in the moment.

Afterwards, I made it (quickly) to the ocean, had a prolonged swim and spent some time poking around town drinking tea, got a (the only...) hotel for $12CAD and hit up a little place across the road for dinner. Then, once darkness fell and the moon and venus were poking their heads out I took to the beach once more and spent the evening with my binoculars and the celestial bounty above, and the aquatic beauty before me.

The next day it absolutely poured. Like the ocean was flipped on top of us.

That's Taiwan, developing in places, developed in others, beautiful in all of it once you uncloak the rough edges and take in the beauty for what it is worth. And then there is the adventure. Not hard to find.

So much more to see....every little dot on the map, and all places between, offers a secret. It just takes time....

May 15 - 16

This weekend was a fast footed trip to Hualien to look at a possible apartment for next year, then to Taipei as Crystal had to catch a flight at 6pm (we, here in Song-Pu Village are about 2 hours from Hualien, and Hualien is about 4 hours...by train...from Taipei. If we catch the good trains we can do the straight trip in perhaps 5.). Where was she going, you ask?

St. Lucia.

Yup, off to the sunny climes of the islands for her brothers wedding. Ten days, or thereabouts, on the beach and into the innards of the island. Then back to Taiwan, back to work for a few weeks, and then right back westward for the summer! Busy, busy.

We saw the apartment - nice, rather big and very western (oh so different than our place this year.....oh, so very different) and high up on the list of possible places. Its furnished, the 2nd place apartment is not, but it is cheaper. So, we will end up paying about the same if we buy furniture for the cheaper place...not yet decided.

Then to Taipei! Snoozed on the train ride and woke up a few stops before Taipei main. Launched ourselves off the train...up the stairs...across the road and to the bus station. Crystal got on the bus, we said goodbye and off she went. This is where her story ends. At this time she has landed, probably.

My end of the story took me on a search for the Shandong Temple, with no luck, and to Taipei 101 to grab some new English books (Eight Little Piggies, Asian Geographic and What the Dog Saw) and then on a random walk through a dusty part of town that took me to a fashionable old Taiwan Brewery that has turned itself into a historic monument. It is no longer a brewery, at all. It is now a cement building - grounds actually, of many buildings - that houses artisan shops, historic plaques, high end tea exhibits and music venues and restaurants. A bit of something for everybody, and it is a hopping place at night. I went to a place that actually served dark beer....a total rarity in Taiwan (Erdinger Dark...not Taiwanese, despite them having a world class dark brewed by the active Taiwan Beer company...strange) and read my new book and ate....pizza! Stone oven pizza. The real deal. This probably means nothing to anybody....but we have not had legit pizza all year (save for our toaster oven attempts....which are good, but c'mon.....stone oven pizza?!?!? Tummy-licious).

So, I ate pizza and sipped a pint while reading my new book on the walkways of the historic site, watching young and old alike assemble in a studio to watch Asia-Punk music, while families meandered through the crowds and fancily dressed couples took their place in the evenings warmth among the tables and nooks of the grounds to enjoy the evening. It was a totally random find, and a totally awesome one.

Sunday found me trudging through the worlds most crammed and orderly market in another random part of town. I woke up, took to the streets and walked for 30 minutes or so until I found a little alley that seemed noisy. Down the alley, around the corner, and into the mix of a market basking in the morning sun. I walked for an hour up and down, bought some fresh almonds and drank in the atmosphere. So much fresh food, veggies and potatoes and everything you could possibly want to eat. So splendid (and so cheap!!).

Then, off to the train station for lunch, then to my train and home.

G'night.

The winds of change...

So, some things to tidy up around here.

1) Next year - It is official that we are staying another year, but moving to another city. Back to the city we lived in last time - the first time - we were here. Better employment opportunities, better pedagogical development and a link to a University that is simply marvelous. We will be in the midst of packing, moving and re-establishing ourselves in a new place hopefully very soon.

2) Seasons - Summer is here, somewhat. Sunny days, +30 temperatures and the sure signs of the hot season at the market. Mangoes! The mangoes are here, the pineapples are here and the peaches are here. Summer fruit. The seasonality of both the fruit and the vegetables that we have access to adds a simple, yet pronounced, flavour to life out here. Now that the fruit markets are populated by the summer fruit, it can be our proxy of the weather to come. Get ready for more mentions of sweat, unbearable heat and unberable heat that is unbearable!

3) New blog is in the works. Not like this, not for travel stories or cultural explanations, but for biodiversity. It is the beauty of Taiwan that drove us to it. We are amassing all our biological pictures and organizing them in a phylogenetic (loose structure, some are clumped some are not...we are trying to be precise, but not perfectly so) blog. The biodiversity of Taiwan, through the lens of two expats as they tromp through the woods and the markets and the streets and the mountains of Taiwan. Wait for it...