My older daughter grips my left hand tightly. "We goin' up," she says, "Up!"
The hum of many strangers in the same space, some in an excellent mood and on the verge of a pleasant trip, others in a foul mood and frustrated by all the obstacles that international travel puts in one's path. Over their restless commotion there are the announcements of individual airlines regarding specific flights, and over these announcements is another level of noise: the general airport announcements. Mandarin over English over Japanese. Unattended children running through crowds with overloaded backpacks, infants crying, fathers interrogating wives over travel documents, the shuffling sound that emanates from bill counters inside the various money changing outlets. The sound of rollers over linoleum, of tour guides amassing those in their charge for excursions into China, Vietnam or elsewhere.
Is there a 7-11 on this floor? Is there somewhere I can get a beer?
Driving around Kaohsiung. It's a sometimes scenic, sometimes hectic experience. How close are you to downtown? What time of day is it? Is everyone headed in the same direction, home, right now? Or is it a weekend, or better yet Sunday morning?
I wanted to drive to Xidzewan (or is it Hamaxing?), but the traffic was too much for me. It was a hot day and I didn't feel up to it, and there's also the continual problem of parking. I wanted to drive to Luzhu but then I'd either have to get on the freeway or take Highway 1 all the way up there, and right now everyone will be getting off work. I wanted to drive to Yanchao, Meinong, Neimen, Liouguei or Qishan but those places are far, and yes, it's hot again today, and I'll wait until the weather's cooler. I wanted to drive to Ciaotou, but then I thought maybe I should just take the MRT, and in the end I ended up going to to Yancheng because all I had to do was walk a little way east of here and get on the Light Rail.
A pretty girl in a summer dress is staring at me from the other end of the tram. Curious eyes from a nearby seat. I'm not going to make a move, I'm not going to stare back, but just the same it makes me feel glad. I'm just another mammal I think, avoiding excessive heat and bother. Calories are precious when you live on the fifth floor without an elevator and your car is parked far away.
In Taiwu there's a dangerous road that loops through the township and that's about it. You can start at the southern entrance to the loop, not too far from Wenle Village, or you can start at the northern entrance, which is a larger village whose name presently escapes me.
I always had on bike shoes, bike shoes that clipped into the pedals, so when I reached the midpoint of the loop I always had to be very careful. When you get up there the road gets very steep and turns around a bend into the jungle where very few houses can be seen, and as you turn back around there are always cars coming up - usually local people - in the other direction.
You can't stop your bike because of the mosquitoes, which are formidable.
You also have to keep going because of gravity. If you lose your momentum the hill will start pulling you backward and who knows how closely some old man on a scooter or a motorist over from Kaohsiung will follow. I've been on the highest gear, standing upright, and barely moved an inch. You have to treat the hill as a single stretch of road, building up as much momentum as you can from the bottom to the top. Then, when you get to the top it's an easy coast downhill. Provided you can avoid the cars and scooters coming up in the opposite direction.
Some Paiwan people have nice lives, but Taiwanese people living across the highway from them wouldn't think so. Some Taiwanese people have nice lives, but Paiwan people living across the highway from them wouldn't think so. Whether they do or whether they don't, whether they don't or whether they do... you know?
I. Snakes and Other Reptiles
A. The snake that slithered up the rock wall behind the boys' bathroom last month.
1. With whom?
B. The turtle a first grade girl found in the school pond.
C. The much larger snake found behind the kindergarten and subsequently lost within the room where they store athletic equipment.
D. Flattened banded kraits along the road leading up to Xinkai Village.
E. A big-eyed ratsnake found in our washing machine.
II. Birds and Other Flying Things
A. The tiny, aggressive birds that I almost kill on my way to work each morning.
B. The birds chirping from a nearby tree as I type this.
1. What tree?
C. Spoonbills seen from the other side of rice fields.
III. Insects of All Types
A. Mosquitoes everywhere, sometimes barely visible and at other times alarmingly large.
B. Cockroaches everywhere, save for in the presence of my cats, where they fear to tread.
C. A butterfly I held in my hand and photographed.
1. Where?
D. A praying mantis that watched me from a railing outside a 7-11.
IV. Order Mammalia
A. Too many people.
1. Why?
a. From where?
B. Not enough people.
C. Some people, carefully climbing upward through trees in the presence of monkeys.
V. Seaborne Creatures
A. All the colors of fish in the market, almost none of them caught in the ocean, almost all of them farmed.
B. Fish actually caught and sold illegally in coolers kept near display cases of fish legally caught and sold.
1. What time?
C. A mammal yes, but aquatic. A small desperate otter that scurried from the shore of Longluan Lake one day.
It was a hot, dusty road where we ate our pork knuckle and pretended we didn't want to be somewhere else. Could have gone south to the place with the rose-scented pizza. Could have gone east to the villages along the river and their uncertain foods. Could have gone still further east, to Majia or Wutai, but we were already so tired and didn't feel like driving even further. A handful of places in Neipu, a handful of places further south in the city but we didn't go.
We were tucked in behind orchards when we ate the Thai food. Items of statuary imported from that much vacationed country, but none of these items were convincing anyone or anything. We could see pineapple fields if we raised ourselves up on tippy toes, we could see the mountains emergent to the east that looked nothing like anything in Thailand. I will drink this lukewarm milk tea and pretend that it's cold. I will eat this curry and pretend that it has all of the same spices. It's not being pretentious if you've been to Thailand five times already; it's not being a hipster if you know whereof you speak. Let's go bowling.
I. Moving
A. A guy who tried to race me on a YouBike from the Uluanbi Lighthouse back to Nanwan. I admire his effort.
1. When?
B. All the drivers of all the cars that drive too close near that one turn in Kaohsiung.
C. An overloaded ferry to Xiaoliuqiu, on a trip bereft of good food.
1. In what respect?
2. As pertains to...?
II. Not Moving
A. That one piece of glass that reflects the noon sun just so, so that you're blinded momentarily.
B. A mountain that has a thousand names, or if not a thousand a hundred, or if not a hundred a few dozen, or if not a few dozen at least eight that I'm aware of.
1. In what place?
III. Moving and Not Moving
A. Blue trucks which almost kill pedestrians and then sit vacant and unused on rural roads for extended periods of time.
B. The aqueous and terrestrial surfaces upon which Taiwan sits.
1. How?
2. Why for?
3. Whence?
C. All things in motion relative to other things, it's just a matter of perception over time.
IV. Upright
A. A Sky Tower fifteen points away from a perfect score.
B. The third floor of a shopping/eating cineplex where I look down at a large expanse of concrete.
1. And you are...?
V. Lengthwise
A. Rivers flowing to the sea.
B. No, they aren't.
1. At what time?
If you go a little ways down the road on which I live you can take a right and then a left onto a much bigger road that will eventually take you all the way to Chulu, but before you get that far you take a left onto another road leading to RT Mart, and from that road you take a right onto a narrower road that follows the banks of the Taiping River up to Taiping Village.
I've been traveling this route in my car for a while now, and recently I've started cycling along this same route on Sundays. The dangerous part is a bridge just south of Taiping on the other side of the train line from RT Mart. You have to be very careful there because most of the cars/drivers are both speeding and not paying much attention to what's in front of them. They also have to make a sharp left turn onto the small bridge in front of oncoming traffic, and very few of them have the patience to wait for this oncoming traffic to clear.
The bridge is very narrow, but from its span you can look all the way up the Taiping River valley, toward the green mountains where the Lijia Forest Trail begins. After heavy rains this river valley is full of water roiling down from the mountains, while in drier, sunnier times it's primarily a stretch of gray, rocky riverbed between cement retaining walls.
On the other side of the bridge you make a right onto an access road on which you'll find a remote hotel where only tour buses and package tours seem to stop. A short distance onward is the busy highway, leading from the paper mill all the way to Fengtian, Lijia, Danan, Jianhe and Zhiben. The view on the opposite side of Danan is nice: farmland for miles bordered by the mountains and the sea.
I don't want to drive I don't want to drive I don't want to drive. It's so hot today and I don't want to drive. Somebody go buy me a beer. It's hot. I don't feel like going downstairs because it's hot. What, you're tired from work? So am I so am I so am I.
Let's wait until the nighttime, shall we? In the night everything is open and the city is alive. Right now nowhere is fun. OK, maybe the beach, but that's a journey in itself and once we get all the way down there it'll be full of other tourists like you. Like us. Damn, sometimes I forget that I don't live down there anymore.
In the nighttime a thousand bars and a thousand air-conditioned restaurants open their doors. Even if people are still slightly sweaty it's perspiration at an acceptable level. Don't tell me about it, I know.
I can taste the beer already. I know exactly where to go. We'll wait until 4:30 or so, and then we'll leave this place where we're so bored and restless. I'm going to go read my book. Wait.
The sound of cars passing once in a long while on the highway. Beyond that the crash of waves on a beach somewhere below us. The sun high above in the sky is no joke but at least there's a wind from the sea, a wind from the fathomless Pacific.
At our backs are the coastal mountains. My daughter smiles up at me as we carefully step through brush along a trail that leads down to the water. The fruit of Lintou plants that look like nightmarish pineapples in the shade. I heard there were coconut crabs around here so we need to keep our eyes on the ground.
My younger daughter grabs my hand and pulls me forward, onward to the secret beach where fun is waiting. My wife is several paces ahead of us, already wearing her swimsuit and carrying a bag full of essentials. I'm not good at remembering what to bring for these trips. All I can ever remember is the drinks.
But wait, those little girls are grown up now. They live on the other side of the mountains, on the other side of the island, the island which is a mountain unto itself, a mountain whose summit I have always been trying and failing to reach.
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