Taiwan - Chinese New Year 2003

Places You Won't Find in a Guidebook

Friday - February 7, 2003 This morning we used the remote isolation of the guest house to good purpose. I took Chu-Wan out and taught her the basics of driving a car with a manual transmission. She did pretty well and I expect her to drive at least part of the way back on the freeway tomorrow. During the night, the mosquitoes had made some work on Michelle, which worries me. Recently, Kaohsiung has had problems with the mosquito-borne illness, Dengue Fever. We're not that far from Kaohsiung, and it was our planned destination today. I'm going to be the first to admit, although I originally suggested Kaohsiung as a possible destination, my only goal was to see Kaohsiung's rival New Year's lantern, which is often more impressive than Taipei's - but that lantern won't be lit until Feb 15, just like the one in Taipei. Additionally, this year, the major lantern will apparently be in Taichung, not Taipei or Kaohsiung. Without a lantern to see, I had no particular reason to go to Kaohsiung. Chu-Wan's college friend Min-Min now lives in Kaohsiung, so this would be an opportunity to visit with her and show off Michelle, but not until nighttime. Johnny and Tiffany had a book (entirely in Chinese, of course) called 388 Top Sites to Visit in Taiwan or something similar to that. Somewhere between Tainan and Kaohsiung and somewhat further inland, if the town of Meilong. My Lonely Planet Taiwan book doesn't even list this town, described in 388 Top Sites as a "beautiful mountain village without factories or pollution." Considering that the pollution today was thick as pea soup, that sounded like a suitable destination. We travelled along highway 186 towards Meilong for some while, passing through various small towns along the way. In one town, a marker of interest sign (brown instead of the usual green, just like in the US) pointed us to leave the highway to see Yueh Shih Chieh - "The Moon World". According to Chu-Wan this was a place that resembled the surface of the moon. Once again, Lonely Planet made no mention of it, but I vaguely recall it being in an earlier edition. The signs routed all through the town before they finally brought us back to highway 186 indicating that we should continue on the way we had originally been travelling. All I can think was that the town council or some enterprising individual placed those signs up to route more people through town to drum up more business. When we arrived at Yueh Shih Chieh it was as interesting as dirt piled up on a construction site after a rain. The ground in this area was mostly dirt, which had been eroded down into craggy little washes. There was a destroyed (and apparently under re-construction) pagoda and lake placed among the dirt piles, but that was off-limits. The only thing you could go to was the (ubiquitous at places like these) snack shop. If it was indeed removed from an earlier edition of the book, I can see why. We pressed on for beautiful Meilong. Apart from the description translated from the book, I was aware of no other reason for going to Meilong. It's far too frequent during trips when everyone else is speaking Chinese that they discussion their objectives, make their plans and execute them without ever telling me what's going on. Such was the case in Meilong. When we arrived it didn't, on the surface, appear to be very beautiful, clean or interesting in anyway. All the while, Tiffany was trying to give Johnny directions to something. However, when I'd ask "Are we looking for something?" I'd be met with either silence or "Apparently." We just kept making turns and getting lost and passing old dilapidated buildings that appeared to still be inhabited. Finally someone clued me in saying that we were looking for "old buildings". Since we'd been passing buildings that someone should have taken a bulldozer to long ago, that didn't seem like a sufficient answer. Finally, Johnny stopped and asked and after a little more driving, they found themselves a place to eat. I took Michelle on a walk through town in the meantime. My impression of Meilong continued to get worse and worse. The streets are so littered with garbage as to form "drifts" against buildings and trees. The small stream that runs through town is awash with old bags and bottles. Graffiti is everywhere, which is the exception, not the rule in Taiwan. Police cruisers are an obvious presence patrolling the streets. Half the buildings are falling apart. (Maybe this was earthquake damage.) In places, the buildings appear to be multi-compartment buildings with one of the compartments bulldozed away, just leaving the stubs of the old walls sticking out and the families living within. It's quite the most horrid, squalid place I've ever seen in Taiwan. If there was anything redeeming, it was the same thing I've found in all smaller town in Taiwan - the people are just downright friendly to strangers. With all the danger signs, perhaps I shouldn't have felt this way, but it's hard not to when the cars driving down the street have to slow to shout "hello" and children run along with you as you walk laughing and trying to talk to Michelle or me. I suspect the only other waiguoren in town was a Mormon we saw biking through town when we arrived. Clearly, the editors of the book 388 Top Sites to Visit in Taiwan needed to trim their book down to only 300 sites. We'd spent a good deal of time getting this town, and, as far as I could tell, we hadn't seen what they were looking for, and it was going to take a fair amount of time to get to Kaohsiung so it seemed that we'd spent the day in pursuit of this waste of time. I was pleased that Johnny and Tiffany also felt their book had mislead them, but still they continued looking for the "old buildings." We finally found them, but as we drove by they looked no different than 30 other buildings I'd passed on my walk, so I didn't bother to get out and take a look. There was an old city gate still standing that you could climb, which was mildly interesting. People's feet must have been much smaller 300 years ago, because the steps were only about 4-5 inches deep, but 2-3 times higher. At the top, the gate has been covered in graffiti. It was time to leave and they put me on the spot: "Where do you want to go in Kaohsiung?" Put like that, there was only one actual thing in Kaohsiung that I knew existed and had an address for: Costco. I was ready for a hot dog. We found the Costco fairly easily (amazing what an aide a map can be) and, after my hot dog lunch, we headed to the seaside, where people have to go see the sunset. No one really saw a sunset as the smog was just too thick, although I did catch a brief glimpse of a orangish glint through a break in the smog. I hope everyone else waiting was satisfied. I'd seen a beautiful sunset yesterday while everyone else was inside, so I felt somehow superior at the moment. The mosquitoes near the seaside where out in force, and the previously mentioned Dengue Fever made me want to get Michelle out of there as quickly as possible, so we left as it got dark and (after several changes of direction that I was not informed of) we headed towards a large night market to meet Min-Min and her husband. Now that we've driven through Kaohsiung, my impression of the city is much different than my first visit. On my first visit, I didn't really get the scope of the city. It seemed more like a sleepy town swelled by population to become the second largest city in Taiwan. Taipei's poorer cousin. But this time, actually driving through town, it's clear that Kaohsiung is only slightly lesser to Taipei. I suspect it may be somewhat less international than Taipei, but certainly a large city in its own right. We spent what amounted to a ridiculous amount of time looking for Min-Min and/or a parking spot - again, no one would exactly tell me what was going on, except that we were driving around and around and around the same major city block. Chu-Wan on the phone to Min-Min giving us directions that never seemed to lead us to where we were going. There's an interesting phenomena I've noticed about Chinese. It would seem to me that a language that has so few sounds, and relies on distinction in tone rather than phonetic sound would be difficult to distinguish words, but, of course, everyone in the know tells me otherwise. My observations of watching Chinese in action, however, is very different. At least 10% of all conversations are spent in repeating the same thing over and over again, back and forth, until both parties understand what is being said. Part of that may be a cultural thing, but for the most part, I'm quite certain they just don't understand what each other are saying. Why do I mention this? Well, every time we've been on the road this visit to Taiwan, I've noticed that when the navigator says "right" or something phonetically like "yo dzwan" or "left" (phonetically, "dzwo dzwan") the driver turns the opposite direction. Try to say it fast, you'll see what I mean. Alternatively, they'll have a conversation like this. "You dzwan", "Dzwo dzwan?", "Yo dzwan", "Dzwo dzwan?", "Yo dzwan" ...and then they turn the wrong way. Small wonder. When we did finally find the place, the night market turned out to be almost exclusively food and a few carnival-style games. I surprised them by doing well at the pistol range, and won a small stuffed pig for Michelle. I did not nearly as well at the billiards game where they place a ball on the table and place a coin on top of it. A small circle (about 4 inches diameter) is drawn around the ball. The object is to knock the coin out of the circle by hitting the ball with the cue ball. It turned out to be much more difficult than it looks. I didn't win anything there. After it was time to take Michelle home to bed, Min-Min's husband lead us through the streets back to the freeway. Johnny had been driving all day, since it helps being able to read the signs when you are trying to find someplace, but I was confident that I could find the route back to the guest house from the freeway. Kaohsiung driving wasn't as bad as I remember it - where no one even bothered to stop for red lights, just slow down a bit (maybe) but the main street through town is being torn up to install the Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transit system or "KMRT". I hope Kaohsiung takes a clue from Taipei and renames their subway to sound like some other city's as well. Perhaps the Kaohsiung Underground? Or just, "The Tube." The drivers in Kaohsiung, like Taipei are aggressive. Left turns are done by forcing your car in front of the oncoming traffic, forcing them to yield. Sometimes 3 cars all turn left in parallel from three different lanes, or if they can squeeze out from behind, from the same lane. Cars often get in the left turn lane in order to speed ahead of the car in the left straightaway lane when the light turns green. Rarely does anyone get in the right lane to make a right turn, they just make the turn from where ever they are. (Perhaps they're have that "right turn, left turn" conversation.) To drive successfully, you just have to adopt that attitude and force your will on the other drivers whereever needed. That's OK, I can adapt to that (once I overcome a complete distrust for the other drivers) and drive aggressively, but try to follow someone doing the same thing. I had to be double aggressive as Min-Min's husband cut people off and forced his car into places no one has any business trying to get a car to go, and all the while I had to duplicate the effort, compounding any insult or injury to the other drivers. We made it to the freeway and from there it was simple to make it to guest house where we turned in for the night.

Sunset, such as it was