Winding Down & Speeding Up

In preparation to leave a place my experience of time and my emotional state blend a winding down and concurrent acceleration. There are final visits to places and people, final purchases, final taking in of sensory experiences unique to the place where I am: the subway station names announced in 4 languages and the particular tone generated as the trains depart and accelerate away from the platform; the sunlight pouring through primordial fern fronds here in the forest on the mountain; the coy habit of young Taiwanese women of covering their mouth when they laugh; the sound of Snow’s voice correcting my tone pronunciation; the warm, guttural, whimsical bird calls which greet me when I awaken each morning. It is as if I am harvesting all I can, consolidating the essence of a place, my experience of that place, wrapping it carefully in an ethereal cloth to be nestled into my backpack. There is never as much time as I might like for introspection. Consequently, I have welcomed the thunderstorms and saturating rain of this morning as an invitation to pause, reflect, write and prepare for my pending US departure.

Morning Cadence

The routine flow of morning has been one of the many delights of this recent chapter in my life. One regular element of my mornings has been reading the Taipei Times over breakfast. Having turned in recent years to national public radio or the internet for news, it has been a long while since I have routinely incorporated newspaper reading in my days. The Taipei Times makes it extremely easy and pleasant to do. This English newspaper ranges between about 10 and 14 pages. There is no advertising. Perhaps 1/3 of the paper is devoted to Taiwan news, the remainder provides a stupendously broad international scope, particularly considering the size of the paper. And it’s not just Asian-centric. There is coverage of the South American (far in excess of what I’m accustomed to) and African continents, with Europe being perhaps the most neglected region of the world. I have found it beneficial to mentally move outward into the world on a daily basis, consider the myriad situations humans are encountering outside of my small corner of the globe.
And this week has been and continues to be a time of great upheaval. Measures not taken since the Great Depression have been employed to prop up the US economy. The ripples of the deteriorating dollar are being felt in markets throughout the glob. Elections, or the fallout resulting from elections, seem to be occurring all over the world in recent and coming weeks (France, Kenya, Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, Spain, Zimbabwe, Russia, Armenia). Presidential elections are occurring this coming Saturday in Taiwan. This has provided a platform for rather heated debate regarding the country’s and the candidates’ relationship to China, with Taiwanese paying particular attention to the global response to events in Kosovo & Tibet. Perhaps of little consequence to most of the world, but of note to me, there is a pending referendum in Nepal which is forecast to dismantle the monarchy.
It has been with an increasingly heavy heart that I have followed the pro-Tibetan independence demonstrations unfolding throughout the world. The Chinese government has thrown the media out of Lhasa. While I would love to embrace the possibility of international pressure and the pending Olympics influencing the Chinese Communist leadership the rising death toll, media blackout and increase in military force seem to contradict such a possibility. Some days back the Chinese police/military were purportedly driving through Lhasa’s streets with arrested demonstrators handcuffed in open bed trucks. The message seems unfortunately similar to the historic phenomena of public execution by hanging or guillotine. My heart seizes to imagine their fate. I am not a big supporter of internet petitions, but if you are interested, Avaaz.org is circulating one regarding the current situation (posted March 18^th).

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_end_the_violence/97.php/?cl_tf_sign=1

At this moment I turn back to the words of Michael Lerner I included in the posting Gestures of Peace, Oct 22. He spoke of cultivating hope in this tremendously conflicted time in human history. As a part of that public talk he quoted Czech playwright Vaclav Havel

“Optimism is the belief that everything is going to go right. Hope, by contrast, is a deep orientation of the soul that can be held in the darkest of times.”

I sometimes feel paralyzed by the magnitude of suffering in our world. At this moment I reflect rather humbly on my own inadequacies and the intention of doing more, differently, better. I am currently holding a more prayerful mental state for the stamina of those who are struggling to obtain the liberties I enjoy on a daily basis.

Just last week, I had a unique and humbling encounter of another’s pain. I was on the subway headed into the city when a teenage couple boarded and sat in the seats diagonal to me. The young woman’s clothing was notable; a casual hoody sweat shirt with a pair of silken shorts and black lace stocking suspended mid thigh with a garter belt. The couple originally sat with the boy at the window. After a few moments there was a shuffling and they swapped seats at which point the young woman lifted her stockinged legs up to rest upon his.
I wasn’t consciously aware of them the whole ride, just registered when the dynamic shifted, something would draw my attention back to them. At some point there was an exchange of slightly raised voices. She became evidently angry, retracting her legs to sit more upright. She then began pulling things from her purse and shoving them into his lap, this all done in a reasonably discrete Asian sort of way. My attention was again elsewhere until we came to a subway stop. She got up attempting to leave, to get off the subway and he grabbed her arm, perhaps only abruptly perhaps violently, I’m not sure. She landed on the ground and began to sobb. I was dumbstruck. Every human face in the subway car was looking at the couple with wide eyes, and yet no one moved. No one intervened. No one asked her if she needed help, if she was okay. I made eye contact with a middle aged woman across the aisle, my eyes trying to ask ‘what do we do?’ The boy sat beside her on the ground, trying to put her shoe back on which she resisted. He became aware the entire car was starring at them and said something aloud. I sat there with mouth gapping wondering what to do. What was appropriate? Thinking to hell with appropriate, what needs to happen? What does this young girl need? Dumbstruck and paralyzed I did nothing. I said nothing. In a matter of moments my stop arrived and I rather reluctantly got off. Even at that moment I wondered about kneeling down and shepherding the girl with me off the train. But I didn’t. I didn’t do anything. I walked around a bit dazed, actually walked in the opposite direction from where I was headed once above ground. In the relatively anonymous urban environment of this foreign culture I didn’t respond to another human being’s suffering. I can still see her face.

***

After one previous failed attempt, this week I finally found my way to the clinic of Dr Le Cheng Yu who taught Chinese medicine to my own teacher Daniel. Daniel lived in Taiwan for 14 years, initially training as an apprentice and then practicing within Dr. Le’s clinic. I dropped by one afternoon unannounced and had a short, halting (due to my language skills) but warm conversation with Dr Le. I communicated I was Daniel’s student, here for only a short while. I brought some tea as a small gesture to which he responded profusely I shouldn’t have, even suggested I take it back as we don’t have good oolong tea in the US. Eventually he opened a cabinet, full of tea, and produced a tin for me in return which was later supplemented by a second larger tin. In this interchange he also invited me to dinner. Franc, a French man, was beckoned at some point in this dialogue. He has been there for 9 years, done all of his training apprentice style as Daniel did. Dr Le invited Franc, and Paola, who has begun filling herbal formulas there several days a week. Interesting to have an Italian, a Frenchman and an American all united by our common practice of this medicine in a place so distant from all of our homes.
When we met on Wednesday for dinner, Dr Le explained he had been invited to an evening meal by a friend of his and so he essentially brought us as appendages. Paola, Franc & I ended up clustered together at a round table with 7 Taiwanese people speaking rapidly in Mandarin sometimes in Taiwanese, not seemingly interested in including us in their dialogue other than occasional calls for ‘gan bei’ essentially bottoms up with thimble sized glasses of painfully strong hard alcohol. Earlier in life, I might have been far more inclined to incure personal injury in the name of cultural appropriateness on such an occasion. Over the course of a 3 hour meal, I emptied the thimble once in baby sip increments, and wasn’t particularly apologetic about my poor performance.
One of the men at the table was a fellow doctor, another a patient and her husband, and yet we were never quite clear who all the other people were or how they were connected. I sat beside Dr Le and while I felt genuine warmth from him, in the absence of my initiation there was no dialogue. It’s one thing to haltingly string together phrases to an individual at this stage in speaking Mandarin. It’s a whole different story to begin doing so to one individual at such a table, have everything go dead silent as 7 Taiwanese stop and listen, starring. Perhaps if I had lubricated my tongue with a few more thimbles full I might have been more brazen, but as it was I spent most of the evening sporadically talking with Paola & Franc, pacing myself taking a bit of each of the dozens of dishes that were delivered to the table’s lazy susan.

***

One day this week I traveled by subway north up to Danshui with Ruth, Melanie’s sister. A boardwalk of sorts lined with food stalls and small stores weaves along the Danshui river bank. We walked for several hours eventually catching a boat back down river. After quite a string of beautiful clear sunny days, the skies were markedly hazy, white and glare filled, most of the surrounding mountains and buildings on the other side of the river obscured.
Ruth has been working for a Chinese company traveling extensively to and from the Mainland for several years. Over two years ago her husband, also an American, died suddenly, they believe from an asthma attack. Having remained on the Mainland for work, Ruth and her daughter Serena moved back just a few months ago. While staying with Nic & Melanie, I developed a particular connection with Serena who was staying there with her mom away on business. On several occasions we shared time reading books, her teaching me the bopomofo pronunciation system used widely in Taiwan, chatting about whatever came up, on occasion as I sat at this keyboard she came and sat reading or singing or otherwise entertaining herself seemingly interested just to share the same space.
Having just quit her job, Ruth has a couple weeks off before beginning new part time work here in Taiwan. Her return to Taiwan was primarily to access the support of the extended family and in the interest of being a more involved and stable presence for her daughter. While we were still on the subway on our way to Danshui rather candid conversation opened up about Serena, grief, parenting, companionship. I was struck by her candor and openness to me being a relative stranger. We returned to those subjects throughout the day but additionally spoke of family and her own questions about whether she will be able to remarry. Evidently remarriage for single moms is even less evident here than in many western countries. The dialogue meandered through meditation, exercise, and Chinese medicine. While most of our conversation was in English, we did share a long stretch in Mandarin thanks to her patience & willingness.

***

Hot springs have been a delightful ingredient in this past week on several occasions. Taiwan’s mountains are gushing with them. I made several forays into the National Park to a small hot spring spot Snow let me know about. The place consisted of 6 small rooms, each with a deep Japanese style soaking tub. They pipe water from the hot springs directly into each room, another pipe for cold spring water so that an individual can adjust the temperature to their liking. Snow explained that in some neighborhoods here on Yangmingshan they have such arrangements in each individual house. What a luxury that would be.

On another occasion, Ruth, Snow & I ventured down to Wulai, which means hot springs in the aboriginal language of that region of the island. While it’s a reasonably long journey, one can travel entirely by public transport to the beautiful area made up of steep verdant slopes tumbling toward a central river. I would have loved to have a longer stretch to hike through the forest, but that was not to be. We wandered through the small one street town lined with dozens of stores selling the evident specialties of this area; mochi in a variety of forms, dried fruits, alcohols, one store strictly devoted to shitake mushrooms, and a variety of things I couldn’t identify. We continued across the river and walked down to join many other enjoying the public hot springs. A series of cement and rock pools line the river and are maintained entirely by the local community! It was lovely soaking with many other enjoying the view, even through the myriad electric wires crossing the river, up to the lush forest.

***

One afternoon Snow invited several friends over for tea in the interest of giving me an additional opportunity to chat. The experience turned out akin to that at the dinner with Dr. Le in that the women were all utterly disinterested in either speaking to me directly or in slowing their speech so I had some semblance of a chance at grasping even the broad subject matter of the conversation. By contrast, the following day I returned home to find Snow sharing the evening with two other women friends who welcomed me to sit at the table with them and were very interested to include me in the dialogue. My pre-meal moment of silence catalyzed a whole discussion as Snow explained that I was Buddhist. We shared delightful discussion about Buddhism in Taiwan and outside of Asia, later about bell’s palsy and Chinese medicine, later still about some different places around Taibei where I haven’t been. It was a very precious, delightful, affirming evening to feel included as I haven’t really felt in such a discussion during my time here, outside of regular conversation with Snow. I found a sense of ease, patience, and genuine interest on their part. As all of them speak English they could fill in my blanks, but were also seemingly happy to allow me to search around in my own mind for the Mandarin. There was additionally both a warmth and sophistication to these two women which were particularly wonderful.

On my last Sunday evening here, Snow and I joined the Nic & Melanie’s extended family for dinner. The table was set for 9 adults, 5 kids, 3 generations. Ester, the mother of the three sisters (Melanie, Ann & Ruth) had cooked at least dozen different dishes (chicken legs cooked in wine and Chinese herbs, salmon on a bed of cabbage, beef stew with potato & carrot, goose, beef liver, ground beef with tofu, several different kinds of chicken, turnip and ? beef, greens, eggs & tomatoes…I lost count and I didn’t manage or choose to try everything.
With everyone thoroughly stuffed tea was served along with my contribution of a pear, pistachio, chocolate cake and Ester’s soup of 3 medicinal herbs. Such soups are quite traditional desert here, not extremely sweet, often made with what is now sold in health food stores as ‘goji berries’, lotus seeds and ‘baimuer’ a form of seaweed maybe…clear and rather strange in texture.. This Sunday evening was my ‘last supper’ with the Gould family who welcomed me into their home the first week I arrived in Taiwan. Broader reflections on this long journey and my pending return home will have to wait for a final posting written from the US.

Spring’s arrival on the Mountain

Last week’s windstorm forecast to bring sand & toxic polluted clouds swept out from Inner Mongolia’s Gobi Desert assaulting Korea instead of Taiwan. We saw only hazy overcast skies for a few days and this week Spring arrived on the mountain. Most days have been pleasantly warm, broken clouds and sun. When the wind comes it has soft edges rather than a cold bite. Bursts of pink have erupted amongst the slopes’ verdant foliage. Just in recent days the birds seem to have arrived from the south. My morning studies have been serenaded by a variety of cheerful bird calls, some humble chirping, a few more whimsical as if to remind me I am in a tropical environment, albeit one lazily awakening from winter.
Having had clear days all week, only on Friday afternoon did I venture back to the National Park. That morning Snow mentioned having heard Washingtonians are a bit…odd. That they walk out into rain without umbrella, even without a heavy coat seemingly happy to become a little soggy. I affirmed that was indeed true and had the opportunity to prove as much later in the day.
I left the house thinking of the forecast absent of rain and looking myopically to the clear patches within the partly cloudy sky. I stepped off the bus, appraised the sky again and with rain at my heels surmised I had about 20 minutes to get into the forest before being totally soaked. As the drops began falling I wove my way through a picturesque garden of small stone paths winding amongst trees, rock, stone tables and seats, crossing a small creek multiple times via tiny bridges. There were several small circular open air structures with red posts and distinctly Chinese architectural influence…gazebo doesn’t feel like a very culturally accurate word, but not sure what else might fit. And amongst the reasonably monochromatic tones of grey, brown and green were bursts of azalea and cherry trees; fuchsia, peach, white, pale pink, crimson. There is something visually arresting about the flush of cherry blossoms against charcoal grey storm clouds.
I meandered through the forest eventually hiking up beside a waterfall. I delighted in the protective shelter of the deciduous forest and marveled at the tree ferns I have been enamored with since my arrival here. Last summer in the northwest, one of my last trips into the Cascades I collected a large bag of fiddleheads, the little fresh uncoiling fern shoots, which are great steamed or sautéed. Here, the tree ferns are sending forth their own fiddleheads, but some of them are the size of my arm. These recent weeks have provided breathtaking views of new growth; fuzzy fern heads rising from the center surrounded by a collar of broad fanning fronds. They provide such a radically different texture to the forest. Thoroughly and happily soggy I stopped for a cup of tea at the tea shop/ restaurant/gift store nestled in amongst the trees just before leaving the park to head home. Snow and I had a good laugh upon my return with damp clothes and a wet matted head.

***

Charlie is in the States on business this week. In addition to our daily tutoring, Snow and I have found a reasonable balance of sharing day to day interchanges in Mandarin, while also moving comfortably into longer discussions in English, and sometimes even a bizarre hop~scotching between the two.
I realized this week what a fundamental shift I am attempting to make in my learning of Mandarin. For three years in school, my approach to the language was largely one of deconstruction. For anywhere between 5 and 15 hours a week, we translated medical texts; essentially a dissection of articles into shorter passages, phrases into smaller more comprehensible constituents. In contrast, I am now attempting construction of this language. I am trying, and struggling, to figure out how the components of phrases fit together in spoken language. Where does the noun go in relationship to the verb? How about the location of an action? It’s interesting that in Mandarin, as often is the case in Nepali, the pronoun is dropped from the phrase. An action occurs, the doer of that action is understood. In Nepali verbs are conjugated, but in Mandarin there is no conjugation. So one can encounter a perfectly acceptable phrase such as ‘hui lai’ = come back, or literally return come, which can be said to someone or of someone else, adding a ‘le’ at the end of the phrase to indicate it has occurred. Someone, unidentified, has returned.
And this is all occurring within a language which is stunningly contextual. While there are different tones in spoken Nepali (which I studied first in a language immersion program and later in the context of daily life during my work and travels there), it is limited to subtleties of a number of consonants k,g,t,d. In Mandarin there are four tones, however there are also different characters with the same pronunciation and same tone ~ ex.

作 [zuò] do; make
做 [zuò] do; make
坐 [zuò] sit
胙 [zuò] sacrificial meat
祚 [zuò] blessing

Not to mention characters such as 一 yi, the number one, for which the tone actually changes depending on what it accompanies in a phrase! So even, in the unlikely event that, my pronunciation was accurate and even after whoever I was speaking to got over their mental block that this foreigner might be able to speak a bit of Mandarin, there is still a vast amount of room for confusion. Amidst all of this I am now less hesitant to enter into conversation, not that I’ll necessarily understand what is being said to me, or be understood. But I’m a bit more brazen in my efforts. I enter into market interactions comfortably. I have even tried to strike up conversation with others waiting for the bus. I have chatted several times to Mr Lee, the man who works several nights a week at the little guard post entry to Snow & Charlie’s village. As in my previous language learning experiences I find some people greet my efforts with good will and curiosity while others look at me as if I have something growing from between my eyes or they outright ignore me. I learn something in each interaction, and by and large have found folks reasonably generous in indulging my attempts.

Snow and I are having quite a lovely time developing our rapport one day, one tutoring session, one spontaneous conversation at a time. We have spoken a great deal about differences between the US and Taiwan in the realms of education, family relationships and interpersonal communication. She and Charlie are considering retiring in the US in 5-10 years and so there has been some conversation about how that might look and feel. I am repeatedly grateful to have landed in this precious spot. I feel even this brief period of time is allowing me to develop different aspects of my understanding of this language. Along with the ocean of Chinese medical literature, I get to chip away at this for the rest of my life. I find it quite exciting to look out to such a vast horizon of possible mental stimulation and exploration.

One evening this week Nic & Melanie’s friend Yuantai and I traveled down to the Shilin night market. She offered to go with me so I could practice speaking as she speaks very little English. Even with the greatest of goodwill, such experiences are tiring endeavors for both parties. It’s exhausting for me to string together thought after thought out of tiny Mandarin building blocks. Yuantai was repeatedly quick to fill in the blanks of my speech rather than let me flounder and her blank filling was rarely accurate. Regardless for several hours we both made a good go of it, wandering through a reasonably sedate night market and chatting as we went.

***

I shared additional interesting dialogue this week with people I’ve met through other friends. Ansan and I met once perhaps 7 or 8 years ago through the Tahoma One Drop sangha. We have likely sat meditation retreats at the same time since then, but no verbal exchange. I was encouraged by several members of the sangha to contact him upon my arrival. Having spent his adult life between Taiwan and Japan, he returned to Taiwan in the past couple years to pursue martial arts and is now working on a master’s in translation at Shida University in Taibei.
We met for a leisurely few hours in the city. Our conversation wound its way through terrain regarding meditation practice and the sangha familiar to both of us, monastics’ role in the modern world, the learning and challenges that arise from living abroad, the phenomena of Caucasian men marrying Taiwanese women, his experiences of Taiwan over these years and thoughts about a return to the US in the future.

On another day I met Paola again for lunch and a lengthy walk along the Xindian River. Paola began practicing Chinese medicine in 2004. Since that time she spent one three month period on the mainland in Chengdu and thereafter decided to come to Taiwan to study Mandarin. She arrived in Taibei in November and finds herself at a juncture I would have encountered had I decided to stay for a longer period of time. It is a juncture I have encountered before during lengthy chapters abroad. It is characterized by questioning and uncertainty, a sense of deep instability when one feels quite existentially lost, anchorless, and probes questions about one’s place in the world in the context of one’s own life.
It takes a phenomenal amount of energy to live in a place with roots so culturally divergent from one’s home. The effort of which I speak does not necessarily register consciously, nor is it inherently negative. It’s simply a part of the contract one enters into when living abroad, particularly in the early stages of learning a language. There is effort required every time you look at a street sign and have to invest energy in figuring out what it says or just give up and muddle along somehow. Every time you speak and have to repeat yourself because the person you’re speaking to didn’t understand. Every time you are spoken to and you resourcefully knit together the words you did understand and act based on whatever it is you understood. Every time there is a loud speaker announcement in the subway or bus spoken in a language so distant from your own. Each time you stand in the grocery store deliberating about something not immediately identifiable as carrot or animal product trying to scan the ingredients for either English or for characters you recognize (or would prefer not to…for example sugar which seems to be added to almost everything here). Every time there is a human exchange, the nuances of which you are likely ignorant. And within that dynamic a rather ephemeral tension arises regarding the process of learning the rules, of which there are hundreds, even thousands within every culture, miniscule and unspoken and assumed.

The effort expended in these minute increments tends to occur in tandem with the absence of deep nourishing human interactions. The very words to engage on deeper levels of exchange are learned slowly and the development of trusting friendships is often even more protracted. The sense of isolation can be penetrating. It was this very dynamic which I recognized I didn’t have the stamina to face upon my arrival here in Taiwan. Perhaps I will again at a different juncture in my life. Just not right now. And so I continue to delight in this mountain interlude; quietly working away at my grasp of this language; going for a run most days; gaping at the tree ferns in their majestic unfurling; reflecting on the learning of these past months; preparing for the journey home.

七星山 ~ Qixingshan

I arrived to find
the mountain still sleeping,
enveloped in winter’s fog
which swallowed
the slightest echo
leaving a hollow
in the absence
of even a single
singing bird.
However even
the emptiness was warm
independent of late
February’s chill.
As if rising
from the worn stones.
As if the heat
generated by every
contracting muscle
which had scaled
Seven Star mountain
over thousands
of years had been trapped,
held by the mountain’s
fog cloak, held
to warm those
who walked
what could otherwise be
a lonely trail.

This Chapter’s Yin & Yang

There is an interesting dynamic tension to this chapter of my life. Tension is perhaps too strong a word. I find myself pulled between an urge to indulge my most hermitic tendencies and the draw to engage with the language and culture around me including all there is to see and experience. The hermit crab in me could happily remain secluded studying and writing Chinese, meeting Snow for tutoring and taking a daily run up the mountain. I am still integrating the experiences of these recent months as if digesting a visual, emotional, spiritual meal of the greatest magnitude. And simultaneously I feel drawn to explore all that is here. While my mornings encompass an email prelude followed by almost religious studying, every afternoon I find myself balancing the scales; hermit vs. curious traveler.

Early mornings I sit and study in the endearing little enclosed sun room (3-4 feet deep and three times as wide) on the northeast side of Snow & Charlie’s home. This morning I looked out onto a clear view of Qixingshan, the mountain which I climbed yesterday completely enveloped in fog. It was my second foray into Yangmingshan National Park which, after the 20 minute walk down to the bus stop, is only a 10 minute ride away making an afternoon jaunt delightfully possible.

Snow and I took an afternoon stroll there last Sunday. In contrast to any previous national park experience, there the entry is lined with food booths selling roasted corn on the cobb, stinky tofu, deep fried Hawthorne berry and a wide variety of other unidentifiable deep fried delicacies. On that leisurely Sunday afternoon I had my first experience of the Taiwanese public stuffing their faces. Elders and families, large groups of young folks, all were out enjoying the day walking winding stone paths through the verdant forest .

I returned five days later on a weekday afternoon to take advantage of thinner crowds on the mountain trails. Stone steps make up the trail ascending Qixingshan, the peak only about an hour hike from the main visitor’s center. I hiked up through fog, the moisture collecting on the outside of my clothes as I passed above tree line. I was struck by the utter absence of bird calls, or other animals for that matter. The fog’s insulation of the forest cut the sound of the road below rather quickly leaving only the sound of my footsteps on stone and little else. Spring has only just begun to express itself in new shoots and budding trees here on the mountain. And many aspects of the forest are still cocooned in winter. I am not a botanist and aside from the bamboo and extraordinary ferns I can only site a few tree and plant species thanks to the visitor’s center info. The forest is largely deciduous with Foromosa sweet gum, Taiwanese Cherry, introduced Japanese maple, Acacia, silver bamboo, azalea and rhododendron and some hundreds of other species.

After a certain juncture, the steps take on a more organic spirit, doubling in height they lose most semblance of regularity. I encountered perhaps 20 people along the way and arrived with the peak all to myself. The last fifteen minutes or so, the trail moves above tree line to steep open slopes covered with a short bamboo or other shrub I found reminiscent of the beach grass of southwestern Washington. On a clear day from Qixingshan’s peak one can apparently see the north tip of the island. I peered out into a thick white soup of a sky. While not bitterly cold in any respect, I lingered only long enough to eat an apple and then began the descent before becoming chilled by the moisture of the environment and my own sweat. It is one of the few trails I have climbed in which the descent took as long as the ascent. I picked my way patiently and joyfully down the slippery stone marveling at a sense of the history in those rocks, wondering how many feet have tread their contours.

***

While the bones of this house remain cold the weather has stayed above 50 this past week, and commonly midday it rises into the low and mid 60s. The outside temperature is often 5-10 degrees warmer than inside the house. And yet between the warmer days, some borrowed layers and the presence of a clothes dryer I have taken bold steps like washing the single long sleeved turtleneck sweater which I have worn many days since leaving Australia and every day the first two weeks after my arrival in Taiwan. Tonight they have forecast a cold front coming across from continent’s deserts carrying with it sandstorms and pollution.

The rapport with Charlie and particularly Snow has continued to develop with great ease and warmth. I feel comfortable to engage in as much or little interchange as I am drawn to on any particular day or evening. This week Snow and I have crossed over a language threshold to actually have conversation in Mandarin, albeit halting with a lot of gestures and fill in the blank with English. This week she coaxed me into talking one day about my excursion into Taipei city and on another occasion we had a rich and humorous conversation about parent and child relationships, the gifts and challenges therein.

It has been a delight to feel movement and progress regarding language not only in our dialogue but when I am out on the street in market interactions or the occasional brief chat with a stranger. While my language skills would improve more quickly if I pushed myself to engage in more such encounters I am embracing this period without much pushing in any direction. I pushed myself consistently hard throughout the course of school I am finding a rather gleeful delight in engaging in this succinct chapter of study with only my own expectations and measuring stick.

***

My one adventure into the city this week involved a visit to Longshan 龍山寺 Dragon Mountain Temple. It is decadently ornate with the most exquisite dragons everywhere. In the wake of Lantern festival the temple was still fully decorated and there was a large throng of devotees making offerings throughout. Additionally I witnessed people performing an interesting practice which I have since learned more about. Zhijiao, or buabui in Taiwanese, is a practice with Taoist roots. Devotees stand with two red stained half moon shaped pieces of wood, symbolizing the aspects of yin and yang, cupped in their palms. They hold the intention of a prayer, a question and then cast the half moons to the ground. If both land with their concave aspects facing up it indicates the question was not specific enough. If they both land facing down it indicates no. If they fall with one up and one down, it indicates yes. I stood transfixed by the practice for sometime, sensing that there was prayer or intention involved, but not a clue beyond that. It would have been a good conversation point, although I didn’t feel bold enough in the moment.

After a bit of a wander I left the temple to find a small open air market with samples of different dried fruits, nuts, a variety of unidentifiable things apparently on offer to eat…a few of which I took a gamble on…a few identifiable Chinese herbs. The market was set up above the subway and beneath a partly covered pedestrian area. In the same area several groups of men were gathered around observing some game occurring in the center of the cluster not visible to the casual passerby.

I began walking east along Heping lu, a reasonably large arterial lined with standard atrocious Taiwanese architecture, truly some of the most gawd awful, dingy concrete masses I have seen. The road was lined with an interesting array of shops…some automotive stores catering to the millions of motor scooters which move the people of this city. Further along there were several blocks filled with pet/mostly bird stores. I strolled through a veritable cacophony of parrots and parakeets, and passed one cage of the most exquisite pheasants I’ve ever seen. One had astounding yellow & black feathers rising as if in a fan cloaking its eyes.
I continued along eventually finding the Botanical Gardens. I had a wander through initially in a slightly warm misting rain which abated while I was there. I found portions of the gardens a bit sterile, but beautiful organized and a wide array of gardens including medicinals, succulents, ferns and perhaps my favorite the idiom garden…which has little plaques with an array of the single line phrases (they estimate there are some 800) which appear in classic texts regarding particular plants (old man willow…). Further along as I approached the university area I encountered more clothes, tea, calligraphy supplies and works etc.
With a bit of open time prior to meeting Paola for dinner, the friend of a friend English woman acupuncturist I met some weeks back, I chose to stop and indulge in a Starbucks latte. It’s interesting as Starbucks is not a place I would be drawn to go in the US. And yet I have observed that far from home on occasion it is indeed okay even necessary to indulge in the familiar. I sat and worked on my flash cards before meeting Paola for soup and dumplings and then made the reasonably long journey up the mountain.

 

Ji Long Night Market

Backdrop: Over recent years, when I have gone places where I know there will be throngs of people, I have chosen to do so either alone allowing myself to move like a tumbleweed or at most with one other person. Fade into Taipei: Nic and his family invited me to join them on an excursion to the Jilong Night market, Jilong being on the northern tip of the island, about 40 minutes away. I arrive to meet them at Jiantan station to find Yuantai, a friend of the family, standing where Nic and I arranged for them to pick me up. Shortly thereafter the sage green minivan arrived to collect us, we piled in with the kids. It was 5pm, 1-1 ½ hours of sunlight remaining. Originally there was discussion of whether I would prefer to take the scenic mountain road (1-2 hours) or the fast way. I’m easy, the mountain way sounded lovely, but whatever worked. So it was decided the mountain road.

Moments later, cell phone rang…over several subsequent moments and cell phone rings the plan changes. We drove, in Taipei, to what was originally the residence of Chang Kai Shek, which was converted into a massive park and gardens. It was determined that Ann (Melanie’s sister #1) was coming down from the mountain to meet us. Her husband Wuming was driving separately from Taipei to meet us as well. So we headed into the park and milled around. Lovely gardens; rose, fern, ornate, organic, a gorgeous sunset, plenty of space for the kids to run around. There were additional cell phone calls through which it was determined that Ruth, Melanie’s sister #2, was flying in from a business trip, had arrived on the ground, and was taking a taxi directly from the airport to the gardens to meet us and join us in the trip to Jilong. At some point in our strolling Nic commented that they had left their home at 4:30, it was 6pm and they had traveled a total of 7km. I told him we were traveling India pace to which he could laugh having recently traveled there.

By about 6:30, the group had finally coalesced, 7 adults, 5 children, off we went. 40+ minutes later having traveled in a two car caravan we arrived, parked, moved en mass and entered the THRONGS of the Jilong night market. I have been to many markets in a variety of countries. I have never seen so many blocks of pedestrian dominated, food oriented market. The entire affair is an extended food orgy. Hundreds and hundreds of small permanent and temporary vendors selling seafood, sushi, gelatinous white rice cake, deep fried hawthorne berry, frogs with pale bellies facing outward and legs dangling below packed together inside a glass cylinder of liquid, oyster omelets, freshly squeezed fruit juices, noodle soup with many variations, thinly sliced into a spiral deep fried potato skewers, ‘Glutinous Oil Rice/Pork Thick Soup’, ‘Pork Large Intestine/Salted Vegetable & Pigs Blood Soup,’ large piles of pig trotters (feet), a massive array of dumplings filled with pork, beef, seafood, sweet bean paste, ground sesame; skewers of fruit coated in thick clear gelatin likely some thickened form of cornstarch, fresh wrapped spring rolls, ice mixed with a variety of flavors ranging from mango to peanut, a wide array of intestinal delicacies…the intestine of another creature being the delicacy.

Nic told me after a small serving of some unidentifiable deep fried seafood something and a bowl of soup that this was only the beginning. It may have been for them, but after a fresh wrapped Spring roll I was complete and helped myself only to a bite here or there from others’ plates. Consequently I did not feel ill at the end of the evening. The entire serial food marathon was choreographed with cell phones, the group repeatedly separating into 3-4 sub groups and later recoalescing. Yuantai and I stuck together chatting in halting Mandarin. She was in possession of the requisite cell phone. It was a vibrant and delightful experience and I again thanked them for so warmly tucking me into the folds of their family.

***

As a complete non sequitur, I’m including the link I recently received to a short video about the Arava Institute. This is where I traveled with my friend Maha in Israel to help facilitate the Compassionate Listening workshop (blog posting November 10th, the Arava & the Negev). This institute’s efforts to open dialogue, cooperation and understanding cross culturally with the environment as the common meeting ground seems poignant considering the current tension and violence in Gaza.

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2007/12/09/church.intv.hawa.arava.cnn