The Last Few Days

Today is my last day in Qubing, and I'm already beginning to miss it.

Last night was a bit of a non sequitur from previous evenings. We were sitting out under the starry sky, watching the clouds on opposite sides of the mountains that line the valley light up from lightning. Bugut said the thunderstorms were probably in Taichung and Hualian -- curious, that there should be storms simultaneously to the east and to the west of our valley.

We could make out thousands of stars, but the only constellation any of us could recognize was the Big Dipper. I went to turn off the porch light to increase visibility. Bugut was sitting by the water heater, watching over the wood fire that was heating our bath water for the night. After the fire got going, he rose and walked to the kitchen. Ying and I continued chatting about something or other.

Suddenly, there was a high-pitched scream. Ying and I looked at each other, startled. There was only one thing that would make Bugut scream like that: a snake. Bugut flew out backwards from the kitchen. "Cobra," he said, breathlessly, grabbing a wooden pole and racing back into the kitchen.

I looked at Ying quizzically: "Cobra?"

"There are a lot of cobras in Taiwan," she said.

There was a sharp Whap! that came from the kitchen. Bugut came out again on to the porch and grabbed a machete that he ordinarily used to cut brush. Hefting the long, black blade in his hand, he looked into the kitchen, brow violently furrowed, considering his next move.

"Bug spray," he said, "where did I put that bottle?" He shifted about, rooting around. "Okay," he concluded, "we're going to have to buy a bottle. Hop on." He got onto his moped and gunned the engine.

Bewildered, Ying and I climbed on behind him, and he drove off to the nearest general store.

When we got back to the house, Bugut cautiously walked up the porch as Ying and I hung around a considerable distance back. I scanned the ground around us, starting at every shadow that looked remotely long and thin. As Bugut walked slowly into the kitchen with a long bamboo pole and bug spray in his hands, we waited outside. We could hear Bugut wildly spraying and banging around in the kitchen. In the shadows underneath the porch canopy, we spied a shape moving jerkily up and down. Ying said, "Bugut, look!" He shined his flashlight on the shape to reveal a hen weakly jerking her head in frightening spasms.

"It was bitten by a snake," he said. A small chick chirped plaintively, trying to cuddle against its dying mother's neck.

We went to bed, shaken.

* * *

The next morning, I awoke to the sound of Bugut moving the grass that lined the driveway that led to the front of his house. The sound was almost obsessive -- a little handheld trimmer mower fighting against all snakes that might approach through tall grass.

Later in the morning, Bugut took Ying and me on a hiking trip up the mountain behind his house. We headed to a series of small waterfalls that Bugut called the Angel waterfall. We walked along a stream for a short stretch before venturing up farther along the mountain slope into the woods. Along the way, we passed several ancient-looking groves of bamboo. "They were planted by the Japanese," Bugut told us. Ying remarked that bamboo usually grows in homogeneous groves, since their roots exude a toxin that prevents other plants from growing.

Once we got to the top of the waterfall, we could see the top two stages. The top stage fell into a pool, which then fell farther downstream. The upper waterfall was split into the two parts, but one of the parts had dried to a slow trickle, while the other gushed busily.

"Wow," Bugut remarked, "it's gotten much deeper."

He set up camp, splitting a flat, square piece of slate, making it thinner so that we could grill on top of it. The rest of us splashed in the water.

Later, Ying and another young man who'd come along climed up farther upstream. I followed shortly after to see what they were up to. I saw them moving rocks around. "We're trying to divert the stream," Ying said. I started helping them by digging an opening for the diverted portion of the stream to go through. Slowly, a trickle of water began to flow through the new opening we had made. Soon, the stream began rushing along. It looked so natural; apparently, during heavy rainfall, the stream made its own path through where we had dug.

We made our way back to our picnic area, where Bugut had grilled some deliciously seasoned pork, chicken wings, and sausages. An old woman had joined us, along with her dogs, who with Lucky, were circling, looking at us expectantly.

It was almost surreal; the soothing sound of water falling, the dark and mysterious forest around us. I was sorry to leave it all.

Friends

What a flurry of activity in the past few days!

One of my friends from high school, Stephanie, and her friend Ryan from college came to Qubing to visit two days ago. Stephanie had been keeping up with me online, and she had learned through Facebook that I was in Taiwan. So she asked me about visiting central Taiwan since she had never been outside of Taipei before. I had no idea how to arrange such a trip, so naturally I turned to Ying for help, and naturally it turned out to be a successful trip.

Stephanie had wanted to visit Taroko Gorge, Sun Moon Lake, and Qubing all in one outing, but Ying had suggested that they separate the Taroko Gorge trip from the rest of their time in central Taiwan. Taiwan is not easy to cross from east to west, Ying explained; mountain ranges divide the island in two, and the highway that runs across the middle part of Taiwan is dangerous and often closed to traffic. It is in fact easier to get from Taipei to Taroko Gorge than it is to get from Taroko Gorge to Puli, even though the latter trip is shorter in distance. So Stephanie decided to follow Ying’s advice and separate the two outings, while Ying helped by booking rooms at the Sun Moon Lake Youth Center.

Planning our eventual meeting at Sun Moon Lake was a complicated affair. Bugut told us that he and the aboriginal choir were going to Zhanghua on Sunday. Ying offered to have one of her cousins there drive me to her home in Taichung and have me stay at her home until the next morning. Bugut and I thought this was too much trouble for her family, but there was no other way.

Last Thursday evening, one of the other volunteers named Yuchi came to visit Bugut and me for dinner. When I mentioned my trip to Sun Moon Lake, she offered to host me for a night in Puli before I went to the lake. I told Ying that it was no longer necessary for her to go to all that trouble to host me in Taichung when I could easily get from Puli to Sun Moon Lake.

On Sunday morning, I went with the rest of the choir, the women dressed in bright pink blouses and black dresses, to Zhanghua. They were going to sing during mass at the Catholic church there. We traveled in a dark blue boxy Mitsubishi Delica van with almost no shocks. As we traveled the tortuous roads down the mountain, Representative He’s campaign songs blared out of the loudspeakers mounted atop the roof. At every bump, the van lurched alarmingly up and down. When we got to the church, we found that the crowd was overflowing into the garden outside the church building. What was going on?

That day happened to be the fiftieth anniversary of the church’s founding, and since the pastor was Bunun, many performing groups from various villages in Nantou had shown up to perform, not just the choir from Qubing. Groups of young men and women dressed in traditional Bunun garb performed traditional dances as the rest of the congregation had lunch. Since the priest knew that Bugut could sing quite well, he enlisted Bugut to perform two numbers. Bugut, both enthralled by the opportunity to do what he loved and daunted by the nearly unbearable heat and humidity, got up and sang. He seemed to naturally fit for the job; he walked around nonchalantly, shaking the hands of the audience as he walked by singing.

Afterwards, the choir piled back into the vans and we all went to Taichung to see two hospitalized members of their congregation. I was a bit miffed that I hadn’t known about this leg of the trip, because Ying lived in Taichung, but there was nothing to be done. I had already arranged housing in Puli with Yuchi, and I couldn’t just suddenly cancel on her at the last minute.

After the trip to the hospital in Taichung, the group piled back into the vans to go back to Puli and then home. I was dropped off at a McDonald’s in Puli, since that’s where Yuchi had agreed to meet me.

It’s strange to see a McDonald’s with a drive-through in a foreign country, because it looks utterly familiar. Back in the US, I had always thought of McDonald’s as a tacky homegrown chain good for cheap American food. I wonder what the Taiwanese think of McDonald’s. I don’t believe there are any foreign food chains in the US; that sort of phenomenon is alien to me.

Yuchi came to pick me up on her moped at around 6:00 PM after about twenty minutes of waiting. She was wearing a helmet that covered her entire head, complete with a visor, so it was rather hard to talk to her while she was driving. She took me to a Japanese restaurant, where I had a curious bowl of soup noodles that came in an iron bowl with a wooden spoon that looked more like a bucket-T-square hybrid than a spoon.

After dinner, we rode to her home. It was a single-family townhouse that the landlord had subdivided to be rented out. The living arrangements were quite like a dormitory; there were two rooms on each floor with a bathroom shared between them in the hallway. It seemed a lonely existence. Yuchi had one room with a computer, but no internet connection. Downstairs, the kitchen had not been furnished at all; there was only a water machine -- no sink, no stove, no refrigerator -- nothing. She was a fourth grade teacher at the local elementary school. When we had spoken earlier, she didn't seem to like her job all that much.

There were three floors of bedrooms, and only three of them had been rented out. There was an empty room with a bed on the second floor, and I settled into that one. Afterwards, Yuchi took me out and dropped me off in downtown Puli and left, since she had to register for graduate school that night. I wandered the city aimlessly, looking around at the brightly lit shop signs hanging off of the sides of the tall buildings. It was a Sunday night. The city seemed to be shutting down to rest for the coming week. Many stores selling drinks littered the streets; clothing stores were open but empty. On one street, a giant flashing sign saying "Grand Hotel" in Chinese blared garishly into the incomplete darkness of the city.

The next morning, Yuchi drove me to her school since it was on the way to the bus stop and because she had to supervise the students, who had to sweep the floors and clean the classrooms each day. I remembered reading that students in Asia had to clean their own schools, and I had thought it was a god idea, but I had never actually seen it happen. My first reaction when I saw the ten- and eleven-year-olds was pity. It seemed as if they had been sentenced to hard labor. However right it seemed to make children clean up their own mess, I still felt sorry for them. How American of me.

At 8:30, I managed to get on a bus to Sun Moon Lake, and there Ying and her parents picked me up and we were off to the Youth Center, which we hoped Stephanie and Ryan had been able to find the night before. When I first saw Stephanie, she seemed as she had always had seemed: small, artsy, but with a new haircut that looked quite Taiwanese, but it wasn't; she told me she had gotten it back home. Ryan was tall, lanky, Caucasian, and about twenty-one years old.

Ying's parents were immediately very friendly. Her mother sidled up to Ryan and linked arms, taking him as if he were her own son. My initial reaction was surprise that Ying's mother could be so familiar and so friendly so quickly, but then, as Ying later told me, her parents treated her friends as their own children.

We drove around the lake and saw Chiang Kai-shek's old summer home, with its traditional tower built in front as a memorial to his mother. Ying told me that Chiang had had between ten and twenty such houses built throughout Taiwan. We then went to the Wenwu Temple (文武廟), where we prayed to the local gods. Ryan, who had just graduated college, was hunting for a job, and so Ying's mother took him to pray and draw a lot to see what his fortune for the next year would be. It turns out Ryan was a very lucky man; he drew the best fortune possible. I guess for the next year, he'll be successful in his career, win fame, be victorious in litigation and marry well.

Ying decided that it would be better to go up to Qubing that afternoon, and so we quickly changed our plans by going to Puli to catch the bus. During the rains last week, some of the roads had been buried under landslides, and other parts had collapsed. The bus was unable to go all the way to Qubing, so we rode it, planning to stop at small village along the way called Songlin and get picked up by Bugut. As we wound our way up the mountain, we looked out into an expanse of gray clouds and soft rain. Suddenly, the bus had to stop. In front of us, we saw that a pickup truck had slammed into a power line, which was partially blocking the roadway. Luckily for us, the bus managed to get past.

Later, however, we discovered that the roadway just before Songlin was impassable, so we had to get off the bus. The bus driver had parked a van on the road right outside of Songlin overlooking the Wujie Reservoir. He offered to give us a ride the rest of the way to Songlin, and so the four of us piled in. Bugut and Renjie met us on their mopeds at Songlin, and we piled on.

I rode with Ryan on Renjie's moped, and we reached Qubing after about fifteen minutes. The girls and Bugut, however, were nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, the cellphone that Bugut had lent me rang, and his voice came over, saying, "Have Ying and Stephanie gotten there all right?" I wondered why he was asking; hadn't he been the one driving? It turned out he was going to Puli, and so had gotten off and had Ying drive. After a few minutes, Ying and Stephanie finally arrived, their left sides covered in mud. They had skidded in a puddle and lurched to one side. Both were a little shaken, scratched, and muddy, but fine. Stephanie laughed as she told us about the episode. Even though Ying had been driving slowly and carefully, they stilled managed to skid and fall. Ying was crying because she was afraid of blood, but Stephanie simply lost it and cracked up furiously. Both thought it was a fun experience in the end.

That night, we had dinner and went to bed.

The next morning after breakfast, Jianwei took us on an outing to an irrigation pipe that had been suspended over the river. We climbed barefoot onto the pipe, but only got halfway across before the iron pipe's heat became unbearable. We then went over to a small waterfall nearby, where we jumped into the icy mountain water. We then followed Jianwei downstream to the Zhuoshui River.

As we loafed around on the bank of the river, Jianwei suddenly cried out. He'd found a green snake underneath a rock, and it was venomous. We all watched it as we stood on the opposite bank of the stream, fascinated, as it slept, hiding from the sunlight. Later, we managed to get a good photo of it before we ran away.

After lunch, we slept the entire afternoon away. Ying claims she tried to wake me up twice, succeeding only after the second try. I have no memory of the first try. We were to have dinner at Bugut's house that evening, so Ying borrowed a moped from Renjie's mother, and Ryan and I rode on bikes borrowed from Jianwei as Stephanie rode with Ying. It was an arduous ride for me; I couldn't take the hills. I definitely needed to exercise more often.

Bugut served us a delicious dinner, and Stephanie and I reminisced about our days in public school, going over what had happened over the course of eighteen years that seemed to have passed in a heartbeat. We continued our conversation late into the night, even after returning to the New Settlement.

They both left this morning. As always, Ryan brought his luck with him. The sky was clear and blue. Ryan and Stephanie were sure to have a gorgeous ride down the mountain with Bugut.

Celebrations

Yesterday was a day of celebrations. During the day, Bugut took me to a wedding banquet in Puli for lunch. Afterwards, when we returned to Qubing, there was a double celebration for dinner. Representative He had been reelected for an eighth term, and Wenqi's father, Liao Jingchi had been elected mayor of Qubing. They slaughtered a few pigs and had a raucous cookout, complete with the requisite karaoke and firecrackers for the celebrations. Mr. Jiang was particularly happy to work with the new mayor.

More Politics

Bugut went out again today. Because of the torrential rainfall and the blocked roadways, the local elections in this district were postponed for a week. The elections will be held tomorrow, and Bugut will finally get some rest after all that campaigning.

This evening, Bugut took me over to the New Settlement, where there was another campaign dinner for Representative He. While we ate, Director He of the Wanfeng Elementary School asked me to go to the school later in the evening to meet some of the students at their annual granduation barbecue. She suggested that I help them practice their English.

When I got there, Director He, the sixth-grade class, and their teacher were gathered around a grill. They welcomed me warmly, and Director He kept on urging me to speak English to the students. I felt really bashful however, and I could only manage to utter a few sentences in Chinese. The students were shy, also. I expected them to ask me questions about the U.S.; that's what usually happened. But their first question was, "What's it like to fly on an airplane? Is it fun?", to which I had to answer no, it actually was quite boring, especially like a flight to Taiwan were you have to sit still for at least ten hours straight. I told them, "You can only read so much."

Afterwards, the students ran off into the school building to horse around and sing karaoke. It seems that in Qubing, they start the kids early on karaoke. That night, they were going to go "camping" in their school, what we in the U.S. might call a "lock-in." They were going to sleep in tents on the school's verandah. While the kids were away, some mothers had gathered around the grill to chat. The teacher gave them advice on future education, as all the six-grade graduates had to go out of the village to the middle school. Some parents asked for advice on how to keep their children studying. Others talked about college possibilities.

Throughout the barbecue, the kids' teacher seemed very involved and enthusiastic. Later, on the way home with Bugut, he told me about how that teacher, who had been at the school for more than ten years, came to teach in Qubing. He said that many years ago, she had had a motorcycle accident and was rescued by aboriginal people. She then vowed to teach in an aboriginal village after completing college. She kept her promise, and ever since has been teaching at Wanfeng. I thought that was a touching story; I certainly would like my kids to have such a dedicated and sincere teacher.

A Long Walk

Ying wrote me yesterday morning, saying of the view along the road back down to Puli: "...it's quite amazing and exciting as the view is gorgeous along the way from Qubing to Puli, especially the appearing of the sun finally. The beauty of the mountains and the shining trees is really hard to be described in words so this experience compensates my reluctant waking up at 5:30 today." Indeed, the weather was clear and bright all day, although clouds sometimes ominously blanketed the sun for periods of time.

After lunch, I decided to walk over to the New Settlement from Bugut's home, thinking that it would only take about half an hour. Instead, it took twice as long, but the views were well worth the sore feet and tired knees. It was amazing. I hadn't yet had the opportunity to see the valley illuminated by the full sun.


A view of the Zhuoshui in midafternoon sunlight. A farm sits on the nearer bank.


Trash dumped on the side of the road that travels between the Settlements. This is not the only site at which you can find these multicolored plastic bags.


On the way to the New Settlement, I found a stray kitten. There are many wild cats that inhabit the forests here. It's not a good idea to try to play with them.


This creek flowing into the Zhuoshui was so flooded that it diverted itself around the bridge (above) and is now flowing across the road.


An abandoned car. When I had first seen it, it had not been buried. This picture was taken after the last couple days of torrential rainfall. A creek running into the Zhuoshui carried enough silt to bury this car. I wonder how they'll get rid of this one. Perhaps they never will, and in a few thousand years, archaeologists will wonder what on Earth happened.

After I got to Qubing, I went to the local elementary school, where there was a music classroom with a piano on which I practiced for about two hours. Mr. Jiang had shown us the school about two weeks before, telling us that his younger sister, an architect, had designed it. It was quite new, built only a few years ago, and the music classroom had a new Kawaii upright. The piano is badly out of tune, but I am still too shy to complain; I'm grateful that there is a piano at all for me to play on.


Qubing's new elementary school. There are six classrooms, three on each side, one for each grade. Each classroom is built as an independent house-like structure connected by a canopy covering the inner walkway. There is also a separate kindergarten classroom on the other end. Behind the school is a teachers' dormitory. The teachers are mostly nonresident ethnic Han Chinese.

When I had first seen it, I had wondered why such a shiny new school could be built in such a remote village. Was it a manifestation of an otherwise hidden wealth? Ying told me later that the residents themselves could not afford such a new building. The reason why they had the school building was that the old school building had been destroyed by the September 21st earthquake in 1999 (the "921" earthquake). The children had to study in tents with portable chalkboards for about two years, suffering from the heat and cold and mosquito bites, before a wealthy Taiwanese businessman donated sufficient funds for a new school. It's sad that the children had to suffer so, and that this town had to be dependent on the generosity of a private donor in order to have a new school built.


A street in Qubing. There are four main streets leading up the moutainside. Each street is only wide enough for one car. Minor jams often happen, but the residents are friendly and patient, and the problem usually resolves itself without a hitch.


A view of Qubing from the schoolyard.

I realized later that the beauty of this place goes hand in hand with its inaccessibility. It's beautiful because it's undeveloped. The forests on the mountainsides are for the most part untouched -- dense, dark, and green. To develop this area would present quite a quandary: if more people come in, then the natural beauty borne of the area's isolation would inevitably be marred. But not to develop this area would mean that lives would not improve.


A reminder of the danger that goes hand-in-hand with the natural beauty here in the mountains. The sign says "Landslides - Danger."

The beauty here is also a harsh beauty. Each year, heavy rains wash away slopes, roads, and bridges. And yet, when the clouds clear away and the sunlight comes out once more, the green freshness of the forest shines so that the mountains look veritably bejeweled.

Animals

Today was much like yesterday. In the morning, I spent most of my time at Bugut's house, and in the afternoon, I spent time at the parish house with Ying in the New Settlement. Getting to the New Settlement is still an adventure, as one of the creeks that flows into the Zhuoshui is still overflowing its bounds and flooding the roadway.

During my time in Bugut's home, I've gotten to know some of the local fauna a little better. I now know that one of Bugut's chickens is a crafty little thing; she's the only one that will consistently check if the kitchen door is open in order to sneak in and snatch a few bites of the cornmeal he keeps there.


The wily hen; behind her is the kitchen door, locked, unfortunately for her.

Also, yesterday, an insect with magnificent antler-like pincers flew into the kitchen while Bugut and I were eating dinner. I've never seen anything like in the US.


The antlered insect posing regally on Bugut's kitchen table.

Unfortunately, I broke my camera. I'll be borrowing Bugut's camera for a while.

Today was Ying's last full day. I will miss her. Hopefully, we'll be able to meet again soon.


A frog. Bugut's chickens will eat anything small, living or dead. Frogs are no exception.

Just the Way Things Are

Yesterday morning, I saw sun for the first time in a week. The giant burden of clouds that had covered us all of these rainy days had been lifted -- it was simply glorious.


Bugut's dog lolling in the newfound warmth of the sunlight.

Bugut was quick to put his clothes on the lines outside to dry. When I walked out, I also saw that the Zhuoshui had receded somewhat.


I saw quite a few butterflies out and about in the sunlight. All of them, like this one, were black with colorful markings that ranged from the flaming red in this photo to bright, iridescent blue.

In the afternoon, Bugut came home with three boys piled onto his moped with him. They had come to play on the computers here in his house. They stayed for a couple hours until dinnertime. Bugut also brought with him some yams, which he cut into strips and dipped in a flour-and-water batter. At first I thought it was like frying french fries, but afterwards, I saw that Bugut frying some string beans, and I immediately associated what he was doing with Japanese tempura. Yes, it was more like tempura, since you don't usually fry french fries in batter.

As Bugut and I munched on fried yams, one of the boys came in from his online gaming to join us. He was in sixth grade, and wore a bright orange sports T-shirt. "What are your parents doing?" Bugut asked the boy, who was munching away; "Are they drunk?" The boy nodded expressionlessly. Bugut later told me that alcoholism was common in the Settlements. I asked him why. "It's a source of happiness," he said; "After a day of hard work, what's there to do?"

The conversation then somehow drifted towards the subject of brothers. The boy remarked that his eldest brother had deserted the army four times and had been caught just as many times. "By the time I'm in the army," he said, talking of the year of compulsory service he would have to perform, "my brother will still be there!"

In the afternoon, Bugut and I were able to make a quick visit to the New Settlement. Along the way, he showed me the suspension footbridge near the New Settlement that had been washed away. One of the towers had slipped forward, but amazingly enough, was still standing upright. The wooden planks of the pathway, however, had been washed away. Bugut had said yesterday that the concrete trail that led away from the bridge on the opposite bank had also collapsed. "It happens every year," he said.

When we had almost reached the New Settlement, we found that one of the creeks that flow into the Zhuoshui had overflowed its banks and was bypassing the small overpass that had been built over it. The water was about knee high.

"Should we cross on foot, or try to ride across?" Bugut asked, chuckling. I was inclined to walk across, and was about to get off when Bugut revved the engine and plowed headlong into the rushing water. It looked like we were going to make it -- until the moped stopped in the middle, engine straining, wheels slipping. I hopped off. Immediately, one of the sandals that I had been wearing slipped off and floated swiftly away. I began to go after it, but I quickly decided that it was better to lose a sandal than my life. Bugut and I managed to push the straining moped across the water. My khaki pantlegs were soaked to the knees. Later, at the parish house, Bugut and I discovered that I had lost my left sandal and he his right one. Just our luck. I gave him my remaining sandal.

Rockslides, mudslides, roads covered, bridges washed away -- these are all events that are remote on the minds of citydwellers and suburbanites like me. In the past, these events only existed on TV. Now, they are reality. Being cut off from the rest of the world for a few days is all part of the rhythm of life here. Each year, nature takes its wonted course: the torrential rainy season, typhoons in the summertime, major earthquakes every few years or so. Destroyed bridges are only natural. Nothing to lament. Routine, even, for this tiny island in the southwestern Pacific. It's all just the way things are.