After getting some coffee from the 7 in there we went to the platform and boarded the train, one of those “chu-jian” (stopping?) trains, which I believe replaced those old blue local trains that mde every stop, though the seats of this one were already taken by a bunch of Taiwanese retirees, in their 50’s or so, heading out for the day, I so hoped they’d get off at Taipei Station, but no, they remained and signaled those among them who were still standing to take the seats vacated by the handful of folks who got off. So we had to stand the whole way, or at least most of it, and hour and a half ride, it pretty much sucked, those older locals gabbing on in the local duck talk, almost giving me a headache, but I guess with the sunny weather and Charlotte being cool about it it was tolerable. I groped desperately in my bag for earplugs, finding none, but in the process I found the missing tooth, or rather the gold cap that had gone missing since last year, it had been tucked in a small pocket of the backpack and I had forgotten all about it, now teeth work can commence.
I observed, after eventually sititng down on the floor by the door, that those retirees were all wearing sneakers so I surmised that they would be going to Fulong to hike the Tsaoling Trail or something, but they actually got off at Houtong, the cat village, vacating several seats for the remaining 20-minute ride on to Fulong (I hadn’t realized these local trains could go that far from Taipei, something to consider for the future). With it being a happy sunny Sunday after several days, weeks, months of relative grayness, there was a kind of happy atmosphere and one of the obasans actually said goodbye to us. Now with seats for the standers to sit down in more happiness ensued, the sun was streaming in, another group of 20-somethings were receiving those 6-in-1 neck/head wrap things as part of their organized outing.
We all filed slowly down the stairs off the Fulong Station platform and went to arrange rental bicycles outside, the three of us having to make special arrangements as Charlotte couldn’t ride herself and Nini’s skills were iffy at best. But a three-person tandem wouldn’t be allowed in the former railway tunnel, so we opted for a tandem for me and Charlotte and a lady’s 6-or-so-speed bike for Nini. We all boarded the bikes and began to head out, but the puzzling thing was that we had to stop and park our bikes in front of some visitor center, all in the handicapped spaces, and some kind of kid’s activity ensued under a tree which involved participants fetching yellow jelly-bean-like plastic pellets with happy faces on them from a bowl as part of some competition. Charlotte stood by as if she would particiapte, but I thought it puzzling, what with such a nice day, the bikes already rented and plenty of bike paths available, that they should bother with such a static activity that could easily be done any other day, place or time. Oh well, that’s the way these group things in Taiwan often unfolded, lots of items on a list to follow without question, but I saw no reason at that point to not start riding the bike around the parking lot, and when I saw that the pellet game could easily continue for a another 20 minutes or so I decided to take Charlotte for a ride down the path beyond as I knew that foot suspension bridge was somewhere nearby, I was worried, what with a scheduled departure from Fulong at 2:30 for the return to Taipei, that we wouln’t have time for both the bridge and the tunnel. (Little did I know that they had planned a group photo there, leaving Nini in the embarrassing position of not knowing when we would come back, two other kids supposedly took off on bikes to fetch us but they never caught us apparently. I thought the group photo had already been taken in front of the train station, but I guess they needed the tree or the visitor center in the background as well). After some ups and downs on the trail, and with the pedal of the tandem scraping the ground constantly, we did find the bridge and quickly crossed it and returned, my feeling a sense of victory in achieving this despite the group mentality of the planners back there. (Nini later commented that they were a very conservative Chinese group, moving collectively as sheep in a flock, they probably didn’t appreciate lone wolves or tigers, that is, if they were allowed to think about it). When approaching and crossing the bridge Charlotte spied some folks in the river below in kayak-like canoes or something, she was interested in doing that instead, a future trip there for the three of us began to coagulate.
Even more inaction continued, there was some kind of visitor center there where we were shuffled into a screening room where we had to watch a 20-minute documentary on underwater geothermal activity near Guaishan Island off the Yilan coast, which I guess was interesting but still kind of out-of-place considering the ideal weather conditions outside, and then there was some older bearded tour guide who led them all on a guided tour of the exhibition, of detailed wood carvings made from driftwood that clogs the beaches after typhoons, a way to put it all to good use. None of the three of us felt compelled whatsoever to follow the flock, wandering around the museum on our own, observing the carvings, which included dragons, a traditional village, various vegetables on stalks, and an ox struggling to pull a cart up a hill, a farmer with arms outstretched behind it. Indeed, they were all expertly crafted by specialists who’d received years of training, maybe as that group of carvers from Jiayi County, and naturally I had to self-reflect on my own inability to have perfected such a skill in life, and several disciplines ran through my head—carving, knotting, knitting, needlepoint, a musical instrument, drawing and painting, ceramics, what have you. But the key word here for these disciplines is just that, discipline, and I never had enough of it to stick with anything for a long enough time for a spore to settle in, sprout roots, and become that mold that runs rabid over the bread and makes a perverted carving of it.
Meanwhile, having wandered off on the bike and avoided the guided tour, I was wondering if the powers that be, the leader or leaders, were not somehow put off by our rebelious, revolting behavior, resentful that we may be planting the seeds of discontent amongst their subjects, wanting to slam us to the ground with our arms tied behind our backs, to nip that evil sapling in the bud, just like they did to journalists in China who showed up to cover possible demonstrations of a Chinese offshoot of the Jasmine Revolution of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, which of course in goosestepping China never materialized. Nini had mentioned later that Bo-tsang, the leader of the parents association of Nanmen Elementary School (Charlotte’s former school which we had transfered her out of a year and a half before) had been kind of cold to her that day, though we weren’t really sure if that was the reason.
Other sites in the museum included some sailboards, hang gliders, a sail boat, and exercise machines in the back that we could try out, Charlotte had a good time on the rowing machine which I couldn’t quite figure out how to do. I should say to the uninformed that Fulong, a coastal village about 30 km east of Taipei, had long been only known for having the best beach in the north, but in recent years it had added a number of other attractions such as kayaking, hiking on the nearby Guling Historic Trail, and biking on several kilometers of bike paths, including one that went through a former railroad tunnel, the main attraction of this trip.
Outside again with the bikes still parked there after a good hour and a half, it was time for the boxed lunches, I flung the bits of meat through the air for the stray dog hanging out there to catch in mid-air. Finally we mounted the bikes and could officially, with legitimate permission, begin the day’s featured ride which involved going to and through the former railway tunnel, back past the train station from whence we came, which had been converted into a bike trail by the (then) county government. I had known about this tunnel for a good three yeasrs or more and had always wanted to ride through it but had been constantly thrwarted by my girls who were less interested and capable in cycling than I. That one-way tunnel had connected the railway from the north-east coast of Taiwan to the west coast via a two-kilometer tunnel through a mountain vein, as does the winder, current two-way tunnel, only a few meters to the west of the old one. The approach from central Fulong to the tunnel was mostly uphill, and after kind of racing Li-mei and her daughter on their tandem I still had to stop and backtrack to check on Nini, who fairly inept at bicycles, was struggling to get up the mild but long incline, getting off to push in places, though she did say she felt confident and was doing better with her balance. This was encouraging for future possible family cylcing trips to various places in Taiwan.
We rested at the entrance of the tunnel for a few moments before moving on into it, I was very impressed with the job they had done with it, the pavement included patterns of the original tracks and ties, lights were installed at regular intervals, and soft music came wafting through it, perhaps as a way to assuage visitors with any fear or claustrophobia they might experience going through such a long tunnel. Charlotte and I got fairly far ahead of Nini, though I did feel obligated to let her catch up at one point as I she had expressed slight anxiety in tunnels in the past, not having surrounding landmarks to judge distance and position by. She was OK and we got through it relatively quickly, a total distance, according to numbers posted every 100 meters, of the total 2150+ meters.
On the other side Guishan Island came into view, thus explaing the video they showed us earlier, “this is what you’ll see today” as a possible message, and some guy was playing ear-piercing saxophone tunes accompanied by his own PA system, one tune being “The 5:55”, an old standard oldie for Karaoke. Charlotte was pestering me to go down to the rocky shore below there, which initially seemed unlikely, but I did see a handful of individuals down there and when I saw folks disappearing down a trail nearby I consented and down we went. Charlotte was observing the large number of dead pufferfish there, Nini eventually joined us, and briefly I climbed some of the large rocks there, amongst other activites as breaking apart the brittle rocks there (likely remants of a more firey past of earth’s 4.5-billion-year history), and trying in vain to try familiar patterns in the rock textures, forced pareidolia has never seemed to work, it’s gotta stick out at you from the blue. A young whitie with acme was down there posing for pictures with his local hosts.
We were back up at the top and I noticed that the bike trail pretty much ended here, the nearby railway hugging the coast making it all but impossible to let the path continue on to points south. Above I noticed the roadway, hearing the roar of trucks on it and mistaking them for approaching trains, and I also caught glimpses of motorcycles cruising past, it looked a very appealing way to pass the days of one’s remaining portion of life, but the thought of my vibrating instrument panel on the Yamaha made the idea less appealing. After a climb up and look from the castle-like structure there we boarded up again and headed back through the tunnel, again, it getting somewhat cooler in there for some reason attributable to science.
Returning to the train station area was a breeze as we were going downhill all the way, even Nini was getting some top speeds going, and there were still shrieks of the crested serpent eagle in the sky above, those devils always flying in twirling pairs. We got the bike returned really quickly and got right on the train, very few of the others in the group seemed to have made it, though Nini did say some of them wanted to remain to ride some more, maybe to that suspension bridge—it’s also possible they avoided us as they were upset at our lack of adherence to the group, we may have been seen as interlopers, troublemakers, who the hell invited them?
Again, it was that local train making its way back, Charlotte resting on my lap, a young couple trying to keep their young boy happy, the father pouring the powder in the bottle and mixing it by rubbing it between his hands, maybe that would have prevented chronic wrist pain when I was simply shaking the bottle to and fro with one hand. Later an older, fish-mouth guy sat where a Buddhist nun had been sitting, I noticed that from the front the mouth looks like the St. Louis Arch, but from the side the line actually looks straight, like that curved footbridge in Gateshead England I believe.
We passed again a school that I had noticed before, young men playing basketball as before and back in Wanhua we took an later-afternoon stroll around the area, there were quite a few clothing shops there. With Nini and Charlotte gazing at garments I had no interest in I wandered on ahead and stopped at a police station where on the wall outside were the usual posters showing various missing people, and I studied the particulars of each person in detail as best I could. I was surprised that a number of the missing, as I had noticed before, were elderly people, surely no one would want to kidnap them and have them do slave labor or sex work, how the heck could they have wandered off without someone noticing? One was actually someone who appeared a total basket case, bedridden, with apparently no ability to speak or hear, yet this person was missing—how the heck did she, with that tube in her nose, manage to evade notice? Then of course there was the more heartbreaking poster, the one with the kids, though a number of them were listed as having been missing for several years, abducted at less than 10 yeasrs of age but now, supposedly if alive, in their 20’s or 30’s. One little girl of only two had been missing a year, and another of about 13 or 14, seemed to have blue eyes, a possible mixed kid, had disappeared in Kaoxiung, surely would have been carted off to work in the sex trade somewhere. I remember missing children posters had often emphasized they were “non-family” abductions which meant they weren’t cases of fathers or mothers displeased with a court’s deciscion for custody taking matters into their own hands, but something likely more sinister (though in some cases it could have just been simple adoption, the parents in living hell of course but the kid possibly doing OK).
The girls caught up and with my directions perfect we got back to the motorcycle, Nini totally surprised it was so quick, and back home we went to prepare for another cold and cloudy spell that would arrive overnight. I was asked to pick up pizza for everybody, and I tried like hell to make sure Charlotte’s hair was rinsed properly when I washed her hair in the bathtub, but Nini later said during the blow-dry that it still had some residue.
This post was guest-blogged by my colleague Bolinke in Taiwan.
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