Qubing Journal

The Last Few Days

2006-06-24T16:55:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-21T18:18:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-18T00:06:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-16T13:35:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-15T10:58:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-14T00:44:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-12T10:58:00.000+08:00

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.

A Smoking Kitchen

2006-06-10T18:08:00.001+08:00

Rain kept us cooped up in Bugut's house for the second day in a row. I checked the weather forecast -- more rain until at least Wednesday. Bad. It seems I chose the rainy season to come to Taiwan.

Internet access was down yesterday, as was cable. Some of the roads had been flooded, and today, one of the trails along the Zhuoshui has collapsed. The river itself is swollen and has covered its banks. Two new waterfalls have appeared on the mountain behind Bugut's house.

Water, water everywhere.

Later that evening, the rain abated somewhat, and Bugut was able to take Ying home. While they were gone, I decided to try my hand at cooking up a little stir-fry. Bad idea. As Bugut walked back in the kitchen, I was looking bewilderedly into the smoky wok, wondering what on Earth had happened to the garlic that I had tossed into the oil. After the smoke cleared somewhat, I saw that the garlic had turned into little blackened lumps. Red-faced, I turned to Bugut: "I don't think I should've used that oil," I muttered, confused and embarrassed.

"Hm." He looked into the smoky murk of the wok. "There's no hope for this." He then looked at the cucmbers that I had cut up on the cutting board. "For this," he expounded, "you need to skin it and remove the seeds first before cutting it up. For this," he gestured grandly with both hands, "there's no hope. We'll use it to feed the dog."

As I sheepishly followed behind him as he dumped out the contents of the wok into the sink and washed it, I watched him expertly stir-fry some string beans. "You need to keep the heat at medium," he explained, mixing the beans around with flair. "Also, you need to add some water."

Cooking, I learned the hard way, is not so simple.

More Rain

2006-06-10T18:08:00.000+08:00

There was nothing to be done today as it poured buckets from the skies. I awoke rather late -- about 8:40 -- to sheets of rain pouring from the sky. Bugut had already gone, and I assumed he'd left his moped at the New Settlement for Ying. But she wasn't here; I assumed she saw the rain and had decided not to come, which made a lot of sense. I went into the kitchen to brush my teeth -- no bathroom, remember? -- and suddenly Lucky started barking. I went outside to find Ying soaked to the bone coming in on Bugut's moped.

"It was horrible!" she cried out as I asked her what on Earth made her set out on such a day as this.

"I thought I was supposed to come!" she said, wailing at the rain.

"But you didn't need to! Look at the weather!"

Indeed, she told me, parts of the road had flooded over. Later in the afternoon, we discovered to our dismay, that both our cable and our internet were down. Nothing to be done but talk and read.

Clouds floating over the Zhuoshui.

Late in the afternoon, the rain paused for a short while, so Ying and I decided to go for a walk. Clouds were floating over the Zhuoshui as we walked down the road, surveying the effects of the rain. Some of the crops had been flattened, and the fields were saturated with rainwater. I could see that one had to be philosophical about things to be a farmer.

Corn flattened by the torrential rainfall and strong winds.

A swollen tributary leading into the Zhuoshui, which has flooded onto its banks.

Bugut went out in the afternoon to photograph some of the damage that the rainfall had wrought. The first suspension footbridge in particular, had been badly damaged.

Though this may look like a stretch of the river proper, it is actually a tributary leading into the river, which is at the top of the photo. The bridge in the photo is partially submerged. The concrete path that leads away from the bridge on the other side later collapsed after the soil beneath it gave way.

It seems the most fun we are having in the midst of this downpour is making meals. The best meal of the day was dinner, when Bugut joined us after a day out. After dinner, he brought out a jar of preserved plums. They were sweet and mildly sour and delightful. We finished half the jar.

Cleaning

2006-06-08T00:01:00.000+08:00

Mr. Jiang called yesterday to ask Ying and me to clean the first floor of Daoren's home, which he is going to rent for the volunteers to live in. The parish house, according to Mr. Jiang, needs to be free for guests. So, Ying and I walked over to scope out what we needed to do.

Daoren's house is two stories tall, with two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom on the ground floor. The house hadn't been lived in in a while. Dust covered almost ever surface. Ying and I spent most of the day scrubbing. Housework is no fun, but Ying and I passed the time with friendly banter.

In the afternoon, Ying even asked me to tell a story in English. For most of the time here so far, we've been conversing in Chinese, so talking to her in English was a bit weird. It feels funny trying to come up with a monologue in one's native tongue. I sometimes felt that my pronunciation was going haywire, because I had to think so much about it. But in the end it was fun, so I didn't mind. I talked aimlessly about my roomates, about my time in the choir in school. I really didn't know what to say. I'm not much of a storyteller.

"Housework is no fun," Ying said at one point, "but it must be done." I agreed wholeheartedly. She also remarked that the state of the house reflected what life was like for most of Taiwan about thirty or forty years ago. There were no beds, only raised wooden platforms that covered most of the floorspace in the bedrooms except for a walkway running by the wall to the door. The bathroom had no shower, but it did have a water heater, which looked like a smooth steel barrel connected by a hose to a propane tank.

We weren't able to finish, but we planned on returning the next day.

The Wood Carver

2006-06-06T22:22:00.000+08:00

Bugut had to leave for most of the day today, and so he left his moped at the parish house in the New Settlement for Ying to use. She arrived today to pick me up just as I was about to brush my teeth.

"You wake up so late!" she said. It was nearing 8:00.

"Late?" I replied, quizzically; "Bugut's rooster woke me up at 7:30!" The stupid bird refused to stop crowing. The common belief that roosters crow at the rising of the sun is an unfortunate mistake. The accursed animals actually crow continually throughout the day, whenever they feel like it.

"That's still late!" she said. "The campaign cars came around and woke me up at 6:30!" Local elections are to be held in a couple days, and there has been a frenzy of cares with loudspeakers mounted on top making the rounds of the villages, broadcasting campaign slogans, prerecorded candidates' speeches, and campaigns songs. It's simply maddening.

Her response made me think about my friends, some of whom are in the habit of sleeping at 4:00 AM and waking at 3:00 PM during vacations from school. I've done nearly the same sometimes. Ying, however, told me that during college, she was in the habit of going to bed at 10:00 PM and waking at 4:00 AM to study. (She studied in the morning instead of at night.)

This afternoon, we went to visit Daoren, who is a wood carver who makes anything from statues of Jesus and traditional Bunun gods to coffee tables. When we found him, he was busy on the back patio of someone's house, hacking a coffee table out of a huge chunk of a tree stump. He had few power tools. Most of the intricate design work he did by hand.

Daoren. Behind him on the giant stump is a bottle of oolong tea and a packet of betel nuts that he chewed while he spoke to us.

Ying, pen and pad in hand, asked Daoren how he had learned how to carve.

"An ancestral spirit saw that we had lost our wood carving tradition, and came to teach me," he said.

"Really?" she said, fascinated. "We you awake or asleep."

"Awake, but I felt pretty dazed," he replied. "He followed me around for a week, and I didn't eat or sleep the whole time."

"But what about the people around you?"

"They thought I was crazy," he laughed as he continued to chip away at the wood.

"What about now? Is the spirit here?"

"Yeah. You can't see him, but he's here. Whenever there's something I don't know how to do, I just ask him, and he helps me."

"How does he communicate? Does he talk to you."

"It's more a feeling," he explained.

Ying believed him. I was skeptical, but he did do beautiful work. The rest of the conversation ranged from reincarnation to making money. Daoren said he didn't carve for money ever, and so he never demanded a set fee. He merely accepted what his clients gave him. "My only goal," he told us, "is to pass this tradition on to the next generation."

Daoren was shy in the beginning, not making much eye contact, but towards the end, he sometimes even set down his tools in order to gesture at us as his talking became more intense and animated.

I never really thought that Daoren was lying; he had no reason to lie. His carving was beautiful, and if he didn't learn from someone, one did begin to wonder how he came by his considerable skills.

Memories

2006-06-05T22:51:00.000+08:00

This morning, Ying and I followed Bugut around as he paid visits to several elderly people. Bugut brought along a blood pressure meter to practice measuring the blood pressure of the old people we visited.

Ying and I piled onto Bugut's moped. Over the course of the day, Bugut's dog Lucky followed along, running furiously to keep up with the moped and panting heavily, tongue lolling happily.

Bugut's dog Lucky running with the moped. Insanity or loyalty?

We visited first an old man who usually spent the day in the next valley over in a small shack built on the slope of a hill. The moped was unable to climb the hill with the weight of three people, and it nearly died halfway to the man's house. Ying and I had to get off and walk in order to allow Bugut to ride the rest of the way up.

We also stopped by some farms along the way. Ying's parents owned a vegetable store, and she knew some people who worked at a market that might have been interested in selling the produce grown here in Qubing, especially the green chili peppers that are actually sweet. She poked around, taking some photos to show her contacts back home. Perhaps her connections will make a difference in the economy here.

Ying talking prices with Bugut while examining some green peppers.

The most interesting visit was the last one, where we spoke at length to a woman in her mid-nineties named Maga, who was the last person alive of her generation. She went through old memories of marriage customs with Bugut, who translated into Mandarin Chinese what Maga said in Bunun. She told us that when she was young it was the custom to "snatch" (搶, qiang) brides. That is, a man's parents determined a good prospect for a wife and snatched her from her house. Lucky for Maga, she actually liked the man who "snatched" her away. "But what if the woman did not want to marry the man that snatched her?" Ying asked as she took notes.

"Well, then there was no helping it," Bugut answered.

"How pitiful!" Ying said.

Maga with Bugut, who translated and explained to us what she said.

As I stood there watching and using a digital camera to record video footage of Bugut talk with her, I started wondering about what it must be like to have a ninety-year span of memory. How long does it take to recall something that happened nearly a century ago? I sometimes have trouble remembering what I had for lunch the day before. It amazes me how much memory must build up over the years in the mind of an elderly person.

Politics

2006-06-04T19:08:00.000+08:00

The loud blasting of firecrackers, colorful posters jamming the streets, loud prerecorded messages being blasted through bullhorns mounted on the backs of motorcycles -- these are the signs that an election season is in full swing in Taiwan.

Election banners lining one of the roads outside Qubing. The election is to be on June 10, and the people are to elect a mayor and a district representative.

I was taken aback when I saw representatives from various political campaigns show up at my grandmother's funeral two and a half weeks ago. Some were wearing full political regalia -- light vests with their candidates' names printed on them and colorful campaign hats. Political candidates would never show up to campaign at a funeral in the US, at least not openly; that would be considered completely out of line and inappropriate and unseemly.

A speaker at a rally for Representative He, who is running for reelection this year. After the rally, dinner was served while people could sing karaoke on the stage. Elections are a festive affair here in Taiwan.

The same thing happened two days ago at a wedding in Qubing; the local candidates for mayor and district representative all were given time at the podium to deliver campaign messages as the wedding guests ate at the wedding banquet. All the candidates were given three minutes by the MC, our very own Bugut, who was very suave and appeared to know very well what he was doing. The speeches asking for support alternated with karaoke performances by some of the wedding guests. An awkward moment occurred when the incumbent representative's wife took the microphone and delivered a campaign message after her husband's time limit was up. When Bugut gently tried to pry the microphone out of her hands, she waved him away, disdainfully. It seems that people universally dislike time limits.

The democratic political culture in Taiwan seems quite lively. This evening, there was a rally for the incumbent right outside the parish house. Just like at home, the event was intended work the crowd. Afterwards, there was dinner for everyone, and I pigged out eagerly. Ying, however, was absent. It seems as if Ying never gets hungry. Perhaps she is a goddess that doesn't need to eat. I, however, seem to eat in a frenzy every time there is a meal. Go figure.

Reasons

2006-06-04T18:53:00.000+08:00

After a week in Qubing, I finally touched on the critical question: Why am I here? Or, more accurately: Why are we here? Yesterday, a gaggle of volunteers came up for the weekend. Most of them were in their twenties, almost certainly all of them were older than I was. The critical question, however, did not pop up until today.

We had our final volunteers' meeting late in the afternoon in one of the guest rooms on the second floor of the parish house. One of the questions that cropped up repeatedly at that meeting and the one yesterday was, What do you want? -- Directed of course at the Bunun members of our "volunteer corps," Wenqi, Jianwei, and Renjie. None of them really seemed to know how to answer that question.

At the meeting this afternoon, one of the volunteers asked what the people in Qubing thought of us.

"You're all good friends," Jianwei replied, shrugging a little. "You play with the kids very well."

Then, another of the volunteers remarked, "A lot of the people don't seem to know why we're here."

"Yeah," Renjie agreed, "a lot of them ask me why you're here. They say, 'Have you brought in new customers?' and I have to explain that I have not and that you're all volunteers."

But the fundamental question, it seems to me, is, What are we volunteering to do? A lot of the volunteers can only come during weekends or vacations. Some even less frequently. What are we trying to achieve. Mr. Jiang gave us his answer last night, when one of the volunteers asked: "What's your ideal for this place?"

"Well, the most ideal situation would be for everyone to make money," he replied, "but that, of course, can't happen. I just want things to improve."

But today, a volunteer named Jingyi, a filmmaker, talked about her past three visits to Qubing and what here thoughts were. "I think you guys all seem to lead lives that are just fine," she said to Jianwei, "I don't see what I'm here to improve." Later, after the meeting, she spoke to me individually. "I don't like making tragic films," she said. "I also didn't come here to specially film the indigenous people as such. I want to film them as normal, everyday people with their own stories to tell."

It's true: the people here seem to lead lives that are just fine by any standards. No one is starving; homelessness, if not nonexistent, is at least not visible, and the people seem to know how to have a good time. Two nights ago, all the volunteers crashed a barbecue held as a political event to support one of the mayoral candidates for Qubing. The Bunun and we sat beneath a canopy, the volunteers gathered around the fire over which a grill had been laid on two larges segments of a tree trunk. I had my shoes off near the charcoal fire in an effort to dry them. I think my shoes are leaking; I've worn them for about a year and a half now, and things don't dry too easily in the damp climate up here, especially since it's been raining so hard for the past week and a half.

There are marked differences between the Bunun way of life and the way of life of most ordinary ethnic Han Taiwanese. The Bunun seem to take things more slowly, not making a big deal out of things that the Han Taiwanese are in the habit of doing. They seem to have a different view of responsibility that is significantly different for your typical bourgeois view. Mr. Jiang mentioned that the Bunun often suddently take time off of work or school in order to go to a party or celebration. It really isn't such a big deal. I know many students at school back in the US who would be aghast at such a view of responsibility, although I certainly can understand that, in the cosmic sense, missing a day of work is not such a big deal.

I think, though, that Mr. Jiang had a very good point when he said that we aren't here to teach the Bunun anything in particular. Rather, we are here to learn from them, to understand them better. It should be a very enlightening experience.

Rain

2006-06-03T08:51:00.000+08:00

It's been raining endlessly these past few days, and travel between the Old and New Settlements feels less like a moped ride and more like a jaunt across the English Channel. Bugut took me over to the New Settlement yesterday morning, and along the way, it started raining so hard that I had a hard time keeping my eyes open as the rain pounded sharply against my face.

Bugut's house (right). The house to the left is empty and hasn't been lived in in a while.

I like living at Bugut's place, but there are certainly some things to get used to. Taking a bath is an experience in itself. I should be grateful that at least there's hot water: there are two separate faucet heads, one for cold water and one for hot. Looking at the two heads made me think of old American jokes about how the British always have scalded left hands because they don't have mixing valves on their faucets. I don't think that that story is true any longer; in any case, the hot water valve in Bugut's bathroom is on the right.

A view of the Zhuoshui River from Bugut's front porch. The heavy rainfall has caused the river to swell these past two weeks. There have been minor rockslides along the road between Puli and Qubing.

Bugut has a very friendly dog named Lucky (yes, an English name). During a moped ride between Settlements, Bugut remarked that he doesn't like having dogs. I asked him why. "I don't like the sound of their barking," he said. Well, I thought, at least the dog he keeps with him -- his sister's actually -- doesn't bark too much. Bugut's dog has a limp, but that didn't stop him from running with the moped all the way from the Old Settlement to the New, keeping up all the way. Whether it was devotion or stupidity, that dog's tenacity amazed me.

Bugut's dog. He's enormously friendly, and seems to like me a lot. I sometimes find him sprawled across my shoes.

I spent most of yesterday in the parish house in the New Settlement sitting in front of a computer. The rain never stopped the entire day. I had to figure out breakfast for myself that morning. I poked around in the refrigerator in the parish house. There was a loaf of bread in the freezer and some pork sung in the fridge. All I needed were some eggs, and it would make a good breakfast sandwich. I went down to the store a little down the street. When I got there, the clerk looked up, and I asked if they sold eggs. "Yeah," she replied; "how much do you want? One pound, two pounds?" (A Taiwanese pound is half a kilogram.) I, taken aback, said rather meekly, "I only want two." She looked a bit disappointed.

That evening, when I accompanied Jiewei and Wenqi over to the computer classroom, I could hear water roaring down the mountainside. "What's that noise, a creek?" I asked. Jiewei answered in the affirmative; there was a creek that ran behind the church building. The rains had caused the creek to swell to alarming proportions.

Mr. Jiang's younger brother Lerong came with his wife yesterday. Lerong is responsible for a lot of the computing ability in Qubing. His wife's maternal instincts defied the imagination. She had brought along a large load of food: instant noodles, pre-prepared meals, snacks. She assiduously set about disinfecting every kitchen utensil in the parish house. She filled a large pot with water and put it on the stove to boil. She boiled everything from porcelain plates to stainless steel chopsticks.

I didn't return to Bugut's home until late last night, around 10:30. It had been raining, and the two creeks that cross the road from the New Settlement to the Old Settlement had overrun their banks, precluding passage. Bugut waited until the rain abated in the Old Settlement before coming to the New Settlement. When he reached the parish house, it was raining hard. As I rode home sitting behind Bugut on his moped, he explained: "The weather can be different between the different villages here," he said.

"How far is the Old Settlement from the New Settlement?" I asked.

"About three kilometers. No, wait; about two. Closer to two."

I still am reluctant to use the toilet, so to speak, at Bugut's home, since there is no actual toilet. I remember chatting with a friend online.

"There is no toilet here!" I typed.

"No toilet?" she replied; "but why do you have a computer?"

One of the classic incongruities here. The computers have largely been donated to this village, along with broadband internet access.

Kittens

2006-06-02T10:02:00.000+08:00

A white cat has adopted the parish house in Qubing, it seems. The congregants here don't know how old she is. About four weeks ago, she gave birth to a litter of four kittens. It's funny how captivating the fuzzy little furballs can be.

Whenever the cat wants something, she mews quite loudly. I have never heard a cat call out so loudly before. The mews build up considerably in frequency whenever she senses she's about to be fed.

Return to Qubing

2006-06-01T20:50:00.000+08:00

I came back to Qubing today. It takes about three and a half hours by bus to get from Taipei to Puli by the Green Transit bus (豐榮客運), and an additional ninety minutes to get from Puli to Qubing by a local commuter bus. It's actually pretty convenient: the Green Transit bus stops only about 30 feet (10 meters) from the local bus stop (南投客運, Nantou Bus Company). All you have to do is walk down the street when you reach Puli. You can catch the Green Transit Bus from the Gongguan (公館) MRT stop on Roosevelt Road in Tapei (the MRT is the Taipei metro, a superb new subway system); the bus stops at one of the traffic islands in the middle of the street.

A view of the interior of the local bus that runs from Puli to Qubing. In order to get to Qubing, you have to ask for a ticket to Wanfeng Township (萬豐村), since Qubing is not an official name. The Nationalist government renamed many of the villages here in order to make them sound more Chinese, and hence "Wanfeng," which literally means "ten thousand plenty."

One of the many hairpin turns on the mountain road that leads to Qubing. I recommend sitting near the front of the bus if you get carsick easily.

A reservoir created by one of the dams on the Zhuoshui River (濁水溪), the longest river in Taiwan. (Zhuoshui means "turbid water" in Chinese).

I should take this opportunity to talk a little about the home of Qingyong, my host, whose Bunun name is Bugut. It's located in the Old Settlement, and is basically a one-story structure painted white -- a living room with four bedrooms built off to the sides, two on each side. There is a separate kitchen that adjoins the main building, and the house looks out on to a series of terraced fields. There isn't really a bathroom; there's a room with a bathtub, but no toilet.

"You can go number one anywhere around here," Bugut said to me earlier this evening as we stood on his porch, gesturing at the concrete pit in front of us, which served as drainage for water from farther up the hill; "For number two, you'll have to go to my sister's house," he pointed up the hill. "Hm," I thought; "this will take some getting used to." I'll be living with Bugut for the next few weeks.

I've a bit homesick lately. What I really miss is the cleanliness that I'm used to in the US. Taiwan just isn't quite the same. Although my grandmother keeps her apartment spotless, public restrooms are frequently filled with an intense stench. I mentioned this to my uncle last night as we watched TV, and he laughed: "When we Taiwanese go over to the Mainland, we can't stand the stench in the public bathrooms there. Just think how bad it must be!"

To the left of Bugut's house is an empty blue house that mirrors his own; Mr. Jiang had told us a couple of days earlier, when we were driving past, that the blue house hasn't been used in years.

This past Monday, before I left for Taipei, Mr. Jiang took me over to Bugut's house so that I could settle in. Ying came along. When we got there, Bugut gave us a small tour of the area around the Old Settlement. Most of his neighbors were related to him in some way. We went farther up the hill on which his house sits to the house of one of his relatives. He pointed in the distance to blue tarp that lay tentlike, held up by four wooden poles. "That's a sacred area," he explained. "Back when the Japanese forced us down from the mountains, the first to settle here were 6 brothers. They used to perform rituals there."

Bugut explaining something to Ying (left) and another volunteer named Shizhen.

During the day, Bugut usually cooks lunch and delivers it to four elderly people that live in Qubing. In the coming weeks, I am to help him with an oral history project with the elderly Bunun that live here. He'll be making audio recordings of their memories as I take photographs. This should be very interesting.

Back in Taipei

2006-05-30T14:18:00.000+08:00

I returned to Taipei last night in order to be with my grandmother and uncles for the Dragon Boat Festival (端午節, Duanwu jie), which is tomorrow. Taipei is certainly very different from Qubing. I spent about six hours in transit, and the first thing I noticed after getting off the bus was how many people there were, and how quickly they all were walking. Life moves much more quickly in Taipei: the people move quickly, the cars move quickly, even the escalators in the subway stations move faster.

I return to Qubing on Thursday.

A Quiet Sunday

2006-05-28T16:28:00.000+08:00

This morning, Mr. Jiang took us hiking on a nearby trail. We finally crossed the suspension footbridge that eluded Ying and me yesterday. Mr. Jiang explained that the trails had originally been built by the Japanese early in the twentieth century, when they had forced the aboriginals from the forests into villages. The trails had been built completely horizontally, without any slope at all, for convenience.

Along the way, he pointed out what looked like telephone poles, but he explained that they actually had been trees that had been grown during the colonial era and maintained so that they grew perfectly vertically. They had then been shorn of their branches and strung with electrical and telephone wires. Ingenious.

The garden next the parish house, in which grow yams, beans, a few cornstalks, scallions, and other vegetables.

Later, Ying made dinner, and I helped a little. We went into the garden next to the parish house to pick some yam leaves and beans. I was nearly eaten alive by the mosquitoes that swarmed around me. It seems that I'm doomed to be attacked by mosquitoes.

Green

2006-05-27T15:12:00.000+08:00

As you wind your way up the narrow mountain roads of Nantou county, just outside the city of Puli in the heart of Taiwan, you will immediately notice how lushly green the mountainsides are.

Yesterday, as I fought bouts of car sickness as the bus refused to stop swerving up a mountain road, I discovered the simple beauty of rural Taiwan. The road was exceedingly narrow, and the bus exceedingly slow. Cars kept on trying to pass us, only to engage in hair-raising encounters with other angry drivers at the next hairpin turn.

The beauty that surrounded me was awe-inspiring. I had never seen Taiwan this beautiful before. In the past, whenever I had visited, I had always stayed at my grandparents' houses; my dad's mother lived in Taipei, and my mother's parents lived in a suburb of Kaohsiung. Rural Nantou county, however, was entirely different. Green dominates the landscape. It is wholly unlike the gray and black and neon of the concrete and asphalt and lighted signs that fill the cities of Taiwan. The mountains are covered in dense subtropical forest, the slopes steep and jagged.

Behind me sat Jiang Leyi, my contact and the one who made my trip here as a volunteer possible, and Ying, another volunteer. As the bus wound its tortuous way up the mountain, he kept pointing out landmarks -- old dams that had been built when Taiwan was a Japanese colony, bridges that had been washed out in flooding during the previous summer and then later cleared and fixed, and an elementary school and a church that his sister, an architect, had designed. When we reached Qubing after the ninety-minute bus ride from Puli, it was late in the afternoon.

Now, there are actually two sites that constitute Qubing, an older site that Jiang told us was called the Old Settlement, and a New Settlement. We had arrived at the New Settlement. The New Settlement has two main roads leading straight up and down the slope. The village can be traversed horiziontally as well, but only through footpaths that run between the houses.

There are two churches in Qubing, one Protestant and one Roman Catholic. We were to spend the night in the Catholic church's parish house, so we set our luggage down there.

The Parish House

Mr. Jiang gave us a tour of the computer classroom that he had helped set up. It was quite modern, complete with internet access. Afterwards we had dinner with a group of women that had come up to Qubing for a church retreat. When we finished dinner, Mr. Jiang encouraged us to go up to the computer classroom to get to know some of the local kids.

There were only a few people in the classroom when we arrived some time around 7:00 or 8:00 in the evening. Two young men in their twenties were among them. Their names were Jianwei and Renjie, and according to Mr. Jiang, they were in charge of operating the computer classroom. They asked us if we wanted to visit some friends of theirs who managed a small hostel. We agreed, and so after the boys closed up for the night, we set off for the hostel.

The hostel was about a fifteen-minute walk away. We tracked our way their through the darkness -- there was only one streetlight along the way through the road that snaked lazily through the fields. In some places it was pitch black. The boys warned us away from the edge of the road.

The hostel. Further down the path, you can see a sort of gazebo-like structure -- the canopy.

When we reached the hostel, I found two newly-built buildings that looked like log cabins. We went into what seemed to be the cafeteria and met the two sisters, who were also in their twenties. The older of the two was named Wenqi, and the younger -- who wore glasses -- Jialin. All of our hosts, who offered us tea and rice wine were lively and talkative, frequently lapsing into Bunun, the local aboriginal language, and making jokes. Renjie especially, who downed alarming quantities of the wine:

"Can you teach us how to speak Bunun?" Ying asked. "Teach us how to say something."

Giggling almost uncontrollably, Renjie blurted out a mess of syllables, and then the sisters and Jianwei howled with laughter.

Somewhat disappointed, Ying pouted: "What does that mean?"

"It's a kind of behavior," Renjie said, suppressing a cackle.

The rest of the evening was much like that exchange, full of quick bantering and laughter. Many times our hosts, filled with curiosity, asked me about life in the United States. I remember that Ying had mentioned on the bus ride that ABCs, American-born Chinese, seem to be the "in" thing in Taiwan. People seem to be strangely attracted to people who look Chinese on the outside but can seemingly magically produce fluent American English. ABCs make appearances in Taiwanese soap operas, Ying told me, which immediately made me recall a curious ad for a spy-themed soap opera that I had seen on TV at my grandmother's house. It featured a slick-looking guy who started his monologue all James-Bond-like, saying mindless inanities like "To be a spy, to have to be good to the ladies...yes, always be good to the ladies." The "spy" was pretty bad, but perhaps speaking English somehow made up for his blandness.

After a while, we moved outside under a canopy -- a structure with a roof made of corrugated steel held up by eight of the same laquered logs that made up the walls of the two cabins of the hostel. Our hosts made a small pot of herbal tea, which smelled and tasted vaguely like mint. It was very refreshing.

"Have you ever eaten leaves from a spicy tree?" Renjie suddenly asked Ying and me, grinning.

"A what tree?" Ying asked.

"A cinnamon tree," he replied, gleefully.

He jumped backwards and went towards the woods that grew behind the canopy, and came back with a pair of tear-shaped leaves that looked like elm leaves, only slightly bigger. Sensing a prank, neither Ying or I tried tasting the leaves until after Renjie put a small piece into his mouth. I gave it a try, too. It tasted minty, but stronger. Pretty good. I popped in another piece.

The rest of the evening went by smoothly, we downing small cups of tea, Renjie polishing off another couple cups of wine. It was quite a pleasant time.

Soon, Ying's eyes began to droop, and she cupped her face in her hands, leaning against the table in front of us. Ying and I agreed to wake up at 6:30 to go for a walk.

We decided it was a good time to go to bed. It was nearly midnight.

* * *

This morning, I woke up at 6:30 a.m. Lately, I've been waking up quite early no matter how late I go to bed. It seems I'm still somewhat jetlagged.

Early-morning mist.

I met Ying at 7:00 in the courtyard between the church and the parish house. Mist covered the peaks of the green mountains as we strolled down one of the main roads in the village. "The clouds were thicker before you came out," Ying said as we walked by the small patches of farmland further down the slope. In the distance, we saw an old wooden suspension bridge -- not much more than a suspended footpath -- that crossed a river at the base of the valley.

"Let's find a way to cross it," Ying suggested. I agreed, slapping at my knees: the mosquitoes seemed to think that foreigners were better prey. I should have brought pants, I thought; I had stupidly only brought shorts. No one wears shorts here.

We tried finding a clear pathway to the bridge, but after walking down several dead-end paths, we finally gave up and went back for breakfast.

The suspension footbridge.

Afterwards, Mr. Jiang took Ying and I on a tour of Qubing, driving to the Old Settlement and the surrounding farmland. Though it wasn't very hot, the sun beat down hard.

As we drove past one particular farm, which had two houses, one blue, one white, Mr. Jiang pointed to the white one and said that it was the one in which I'd be staying.

The stream near the Old Settlement. Further up the stream, there is a series of small waterfalls.

We also visited a stream near the Old Settlement. Next to the stream, on the dirt pathway, he noticed some old plums rotting on the ground, and found the tree from which they had fallen. "Look! Lizhi -- plums!" he said, picking a small one that had not yet fallen and handing it to me. It was dark purple, and was a bit bitter and sour. There was pit at the center -- funny, I don't remember ever encountering a pit in plums at home in the States. Through the whole tour, Mr. Jiang took copious amounts of pictures on his digital camera.

After lunch, I headed towards the computer classroom. On the way, I passed some of local playing in the playground. One of the them ran up from behind me and gave my a little shove, and asked me my name. Ying came along afterwards, and the boy asked her: "Why are you so white?"

This struck me as a fairly strange situation. Back in the US, I had always been the one with colored skin, and now I found myself part of a lighter-skinned majority amidst a community of people with darker skin. Although they look similar to ethnic Han Chinese, the Bunun generally have skin that is much darker. One might mistake them for Filipinos.

This evening we had dinner in a local teacher's house. The local priest ate with us, and the district representative also paid a visit. After we finished dinner, Mr. Jiang showed us some old black-and-white photographs from about three decades ago. One of them was of a classmate of my mother's, posing with a few of the local children. The photo was taken when she was a freshman in college. She looked so young, with the modest, shoulder-length hairdo that many women had in the 1980s. "You can have it to take home to show her," said Mr. Jiang.

I wonder how I will look to people when they look at photos of me thirty years from now.