1. If you were to consult an oracle, what would you ask? I’m visiting a shaman tomorrow night to observe the rendering of answers from the heavens in paintings. Most likely I’m probably not going to ask anything. I’m not sure that knowing mysteries is all that useful or fun…
2. If you’re instructed to stay off your feet, not supposed to swim, need to rest, and have half a week in Asia, where would you go on vacation and what would you do?
On the day we went to the temple, we stopped by a fishing port for lunch, where we serendipitously ran into my other cousins (I have a ridiculously fortuitous record of randomly running into people I know where I’m not really expecting them) at the restaurant we happened to pick. I really sympathize with vegetarians. Watching my lunch thrashing vigorously in the net that has just lifted it out of the tank made me feel horribly guilty. My cousin told me I wasn’t allowed to become vegetarian that day, since after all, I’ve been coughing and running goopiness.
Then we all drove to Danshuei together and I had the chance to visit the private school which was founded by missionary George McKay (pronounced Mc-I by the people I know here). Presbyterian missionaries had a large impact on my family– my grandmother and grand-aunt went to a Presbyterian girl’s school (my mother tells me my grand-aunt was one of the first girls to have her hair cut short in those days, as well as get an education thanks to my great-grandfather’s progressive views), and my grandfather was quite involved with the Presbyterian church and the first YMCA in Taiwan.
Banyan tree tangle.
“Aboriginal house”– no mortar between the stones.
A bit of Althea University through the iron fence.
Down a steep hill in Danshuei– we passed two wedding photo shoots as we walked down to Fort San Domingo.
Note the many flags lining the entrance way to the fort– it was built by the Spanish, taken by the Dutch, and used as a consular office by the British. It’s a squarish building.
This is my attempt at the shot in my guidebook I later realized.
The side we didn’t enter– I find the juxtaposition of the windmill and the red brick arches interesting.
A view of the Danshuei from the fort.
Inside the fort were these little cells with oddly proportioned statues of simulated prisoners inside them. I couldn’t help but feel bad for the sculptor whose work went into the statues so that the could be set in little dark cells where people would really only see their lurking shadow.
When I first came to Taiwan, there were no such things as singing garbage trucks. Garbage sat on the streets, danced by the curbs, and added to the… fragrance, shall we say, of the city.
On the later visit in high school, we were puttering about, and I heard an electronic version of Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” cheerily singing down the street.
“Is that the ice cream truck?” I asked my mother. She made an inquiry for me which was met with laughter. The phenomenon of the singing garbage truck was introduced to me. In Taiwan now, no matter the city I’ve visited, yellow garbage trucks sing down the streets and people in the neighborhood trail them to hand up bags of garbage to the riding garbage person in the back.
Poor Beethoven– children in Taiwan must go, “Oh, the garbage song!” when they’re assigned to learn it for the piano now. Another song in the garbage repertoire is one of the two piano pieces my mother used to play, “Silvery Waves.” (Correction: it is “Maiden’s Prayer”) The music is a bit electronically saccharine (I hate the idea of people getting to know classical music by its ringtone electronic incarnations, but that’s one of the minor travesties of the 21st century I suppose), but it does the job of calling out garbage-wielding grannies and housewives.
We haven’t taken our garbage out in an age, so it’s piled up– and I felt as I was in danger of becoming the poor Shel Silverstein character–“Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who would not take the garbage out” — the fruit flies seem to be cheerfully colonizing our kitchen. So tonight, hearing the faint strains of “Fur Elise”– I dashed through the house and collected the garbage (well, not all of it, I suppose there’s still quite a few random bags of it dangling from kitchen cabinet knobs– but such things happen in group living situations). Then popped out into the night to wait– at least six large plastic bags full of rubbish (right hand) or recycling (left hand) dangling from my fingers. It’s hot. My little Firefox weather bar tells me it’s 86 F (still can’t get used to Celsius, I know– I’m a stupid American).
I stood out and dripped on the sidewalk, the traffic and scooters grumbling by as I fidgeted, admired the lighting of night, and waited on my street. One’s not merely allowed to leave one’s garbage on the sidewalk, but someone did, which showed me that I hadn’t missed our trucks yet. But I couldn’t remember– is it 8:40 or 8:45, and I started the garbage gathering around 8:30, so…
Suddenly I saw a silent yellow garbage truck glide past, turning light on. Abandoning all pretenses of dignity (which I’ve given up all claims to long ago), I dashed down the street in my flapping unbuckled Birks (apologies to my physical therapist who would tut tut), and followed it around our corner where it finally started to play “Fur Elise” as it stopped on a side alley branching off of ours and people handed up their pots of kitchen wet garbage to be dumped in the blue can, and bags of everything else, while the recycling truck stopped behind it and gathered the bottles and paper.
And now, as I type, I can hear the faint strains of “Fur Elise” from yet another garbage truck in the vicinity…
Becoming Taiwanese 
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