Hisoka and I had both just arrived in Hong Kong from short flights and long airport delays, so neither of us objected to a soak in a hot tub. I brought a bathing suit to Hong Kong because our new apartment has two swimming pools I wanted to try out. I also brought it to Hisoka's apartment because he said there was a pool downstairs. He never mentioned the hot tub because he wanted to surprise me. And it worked. He surprised the pants off me. Hisoka brought his own tiny trunks, which I never saw on this trip. As private as that hot tub was, he agreed with me that bathing suits would have been gratuitous.
It is worth noting that I see nothing inherently sexual about swimming, or soaking, naked. I have been in thousands of swimming pools, hot tubs, hot springs, lakes, rivers, and general bodies of water without doing anything even adjacent to the neighborhood of sex. Hisoka and I got naked in a Miyajima hot spring on our first real date, and hanky panky was categorically tabu. Not only were we surrounded by older people, but that sort of thing would have gotten us kicked out and banned for life.
It is also worth noting that neither Hisoka nor I had our spices ground for a considerable period of time. The fact of which was vividly illustrated when I got into the water. What is a discreet way to put this? Hisoka shot his load all over the deck faster than a teenager in the back seat on prom night. He was fully erect before he even took off his clothes. Watching me get naked and penetrate the jet bubbles was too much for him. I like to put a positive spin on things, so the good news was that none of his seed spilled into the hot tub. I had no idea how often that thing was cleaned. I only knew that hosing off the wooden deck had to be an easier job.
With sex in the water out of the question, we both sat back and enjoyed a nice soak. Yes, the polite thing for him to do would have been to service me. That would have required me keeping most of myself out of the hot tub, and I wanted to be in it. Besides, we had all day.
We talked about going out to hit the town, but we both had a busy week ahead of us. Sunday was our day of rest. It made more sense to make use of the apartment. Since it was an apartment and not a hotel, we had to go out when we wanted to eat. I like staying in apartments better than hotels, but hotels have room service.
For lunch, we went to Feast, an upscale buffet restaurant on King's Road near Quarry Bay Park. They had a wide variety of local food on tiny plates and local food pretending to be international food, with more soups, salads, and sides than anyone really needs. They even had coleslaw, which is not something you see every day in Hong Kong. I mostly just got desserts, because that is how I roll. Hisoka got several tiny plates of stamina, because he would need it. We both knew that after lunch, I was going to ride him like the Matterhorn. Hong Kong Disneyland has no Matterhorn, but saying I would ride him like the Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop sounds almost insulting.
Hisoka and I are both old fashioned in matters of the heart. I like to wait a painfully long time before I jump in the sack and he tries to get laid as soon as possible. We are more new fashioned in our willingness to find less traditional locations. Hot tubs, for example. Balconies are another. I have always been fond of kitchen coupling. The typical kitchen counter tends to be a nice height. Whoever invented islands was a genius, though quartz countertops can get cold.
Despite being open to several rooms, a few secluded outdoor spots, and pieces of furniture that are not beds, we found ourselves on the bed. Next to the bed was a large, almost floor to ceiling window with unobstructed views of Devil's Peak. I never really noticed the view with Hisoka on top of, under, and behind me. I can say that it was a nice bed, with a bit of give and not too much bounce.. Traditionally, Chinese beds are hard. Pillow tops have only recently made their way to China. You never want anything in your bed to be too soft, while a nice cushion under your butt or knees is good for longevity. What we call queen size on this side of the world is smaller than what I consider queen size. That queen size was wide enough for two, if a little on the short side. I am probably much shorter than anyone in the NBA, yet I have spent countless nights with my feet hanging over the bed.
I may have misspoken about the view. I seem to recall looking at the hills while we were pressed together on the tiny bedroom balcony. Though I suppose, technically, that was not in the bedroom.
Hisoka brought a box of condoms to Hong Kong. That might sound presumptuous, but it is far better to have something you might never use than to not have something you desperately need. He brought them from Japan instead of buying them in Hong Kong because he says Chinese condoms are too small. This is where things get interesting, and probably more than a little offensive to a couple billion people.
According to Hisoka, condoms in China are smaller than condoms in Japan. I cannot verify such a thing, but my first boyfriend in Hong Kong, who was not even a little Chinese, also claimed they were too small. In his case, he was making a mountain out of a molehill. Despite not wielding a katana himself, he assumed Chinese men were all holding a tanto. Hisoka, both on the other hand and using the other hand, has a more realistic self-image. He has seen enough porn to remain humble, and spent enough time in hot springs and locker rooms to boast. When he says Chinese condoms are too small, I have to consider it theoretically possible. Yet I cannot ignore that Durex and Trojan are in more than a few stores, and I know they come in more than one size. Several Japanese brands are widely available. It seems unlikely that those Japanese companies are making extra small sizes for the Chinese market. Unless it was for purely mocking purposes.
On what has to be the most important hand, a typical condom can stretch more than enough for almost every man. Unless you are exceptionally tiny or exceptionally huge. I would imagine more men have difficulties with condoms that are too loose. The funny thing is, I have never heard of a single man in the history of the universe say that condoms are too big.
Which brings us to a question that every man I have ever known has asked me. Does size matter? To men, yes. It absolutely does. To women? I don't know. I speak for only one woman. But I know that even if Hisoka were hung like an elephant, spraying the pool deck would have still been useless to me. It is not simply the motion of the ocean that counts, but how long it takes that boat to dock. A cabin cruiser that makes it to shore is a million times better than a giant oil tanker that spills crude 3,000 kilometers from its destination. The good news is that after Hisoka's blue balls turned beige, he had far more control. The other good news is that he had a box of condoms. Just one would not have been enough for the day. Though I still say what he could get in Hong Kong was sufficient.
Before dinner, we spent more time in and around the rooftop hot tub. November is not the best time to lie out and get a tan, and Hong Kong is not the best tanning city. Not that it matters. My skin goes straight from alabaster to lobster. But that particular deck had ample sitting and/or lying room, and the sun, such as it was, still felt good on my skin. Especially on a rooftop with a soft breeze and no one staring at me. Or at least only one person staring at me.
For dinner, we went to Frites, a Belgian restaurant just off King's Road near Quarry Bay Park. Or at least a Chinese version of a Belgian restaurant. Hisoka picked it because I used to work in Belgium. Except, I have never worked in Belgium. I was a little disappointed that he thought my time in Amsterdam was actually Belgium. Then I realized that we rarely talk about our jobs. I told him I was going to Amsterdam when I did, but that was three years ago, and I might not have mentioned it since. I would be surprised if I have never mentioned Amsterdam. It is a wondrous city. I would be equally surprised if we had any meaningful conversation about my work in Amsterdam. He tells me about places he goes for work, while I only have a general idea of what he does for a living.
Having never worked in Belgium, I cannot say anything about how authentic the Frites menu is, but they had falafel quesadillas, which I support wholeheartedly. You can put falafel in anything, and you can put anything in a quesadilla, so why not falafel quesadilla. Being a Belgian restaurant, maybe, they also had a large beer menu. So we got a bottle of wine. We also got some frites with mayonnaise because when you go to a place called Frites, you have to try the frites. If I went to Mejores Tacos del Mundo, there is a pretty good chance I might get a taco.
Hisoka has always known that I can taste absolutely nothing. He still likes to show me restaurants that he thinks I would have liked back when I could sense flavor. I am more than used to going wherever whoever I'm going out to eat with wants to go, so I let Hisoka find all of our meals. Revealingly, he never suggested anything American, Chinese or Japanese. During business meals, he mostly eats Japanese. On his free time, he likes to try new things. His assumption that I would like to avoid American food is both sound and unnecessary since I rarely come in contact with American food.
Back when I had a boyfriend and an active sex life, I often looked at past travels in terms of food. One of my favorite things about going somewhere new was eating something new. I never reminisce about the places we knocked boots. Now that food is only something I eat to survive, I might start looking back at travel in terms of whether or not I got some action. In a few months, I will forget all about the restaurants on this trip. Without the coleslaw, our lunch would already be forgotten. What I will remember most are the naked bodies twisting around each other. And that rooftop hot tub. If you can put a hot tub on your roof, I highly recommend it. Unless you live in a gabled house.
The whole point of keeping the Ma On Shan apartment rather than renting it out was to have a place to stay whenever we are in town. I spent the first night somewhere else anyway. Lily spent the night in the new apartment, along with our tenant/Kevin's friend. I can pretty much guarantee that they had a patently different night than Hisoka and I. But there is no need to feel bad for Lily. She lives with her boyfriend. They can do all the deviant things Hisoka and I did any time. But we have no hot tub at home.
Friday, December 10, 2021
Wednesday, December 8, 2021
My Birthday Present part 1
The day before my birthday, Lily and I went to Hong Kong. We were always going to spend a day or two together. At the same time, we are both fully capable of entertaining ourselves without the other. I knew I never had to worry about her when I made other plans for Sunday.
Hisoka and I met in May 2018. Our second date was six months after our first. You could say we have been taking things slowly. We had not seen each other in person since 2019, though we keep in contact via the technology of the day. In early 2020, his country was hit hard by the popular virus that was making the rounds. That put an end to his business trips to Hong Kong, or anywhere else. When the Japanese government blocked visitors from China, we knew we would not be seeing other again anytime soon. I moved to Kaohsiung in the middle of 2020. Taiwan was practically unaffected, and to keep it that way, they restricted visitors and quarantined the few people they let in.
Long distance relationships blow. I had a boyfriend who moved to Fuzhou while we lived in Hong Kong. The two cities are in the same country, less than 700 kilometers apart, about the same distance as New York to Raleigh. But you have to fly, go through immigration, and deal with Chinese airport bullshit, which is much easier than American airport bullshit, though still unnecessarily bureaucratic. I would never fly from New York to Raleigh. I can drive it in 8 hours, or two 4 hour drives if you spend a night or two in Washington. Driving from Hong Kong to Fuzhou is not much of an option. You can take a few buses, which would take all day.
Fortunately, Hisoka and I are not in a long distance relationship. We live over 2,000 km apart, and are not anywhere close to monogamous. He is free to do whatever he wants, though he says work keeps him too busy and the virus makes dating harder than ever. I am free to do whatever I want, though I say work keeps me busy and I have minimal interest in Chinese men.
Since I'm white, I am required by the horrendous history of my people to point out that it is not a racial thing. I take far greater issue with the socioeconomic role of women in Chinese culture. I find Hisoka attractive. He is Japanese, which is not at all Chinese, though my people can rarely tell the difference. We tend to think of all East Asians as one giant homogeneous other. More often than not, when people from my country talk about people from East Asia, they simply call everyone Asian, adding India, Israel, and all the -stans into the giant mix. We get upset if people don't know the difference between New York City and Upstate, because they are so different, while blindly lumping all 5 billion Asians together.
Eventually, China made it easier to move around and Japan got their problems under control. By the time Hisoka started going back to Hong Kong on intermittent business trips, I was mostly in Kaohsiung, a much smaller city not frequented nearly as often by foreigners in suits.
Then came our trip to Disneyland. It was timed for my birthday, and not for Hisoka. His presence was a coincidence, and not especially fortuitous. All of his big meetings were during the week Lily and I returned to Taiwan. If Hisoka and I were going to see each other in Hong Kong, it would have to be the weekend before. I had to work that Saturday. The earliest I could go was Sunday, and we were both busy all day Monday. Lily and I were always going to fly to Hong Kong on Sunday. Monday was a big day, so we wanted to get in the day before. Hisoka was originally going to arrive on Sunday, but changed it to Saturday, giving him time to prepare and rest up. While he still had some work to do on Saturday, Sunday was his day off, so he could devote it entirely to me. As it should be.
When Lily and I landed on Sunday, we went straight to our brand new Ma On Shan apartment. Now that I have spent some time in the apartment, I can see how nice it is. Since the estate opened this year, everything is new and clean. Hopefully, they will always maintain the grounds and greenery up to the current standards, but it will never look as new as it does right now. Eventually, corners will get dirty and tiles will crack. Chinese culture does not frown on treating your surroundings like a giant trash can. That the estate is closer to the rich end of the spectrum than the poor end is irrelevant since rich people are no less likely to be slobs here. They simply have more people cleaning up after them.
We also saw how inconvenient the apartment's location is to most of the city. To get to our previous apartments from the airport, we simply took the Airport Express to Kowloon and took a taxi to the apartment. When we lived in Yau Ma Tei, we could walk from the station. For the new apartment, we took the Airport Express to Kowloon, took the MTR to Wu Kai Sha, and walked to the apartment. It was only one MTR line, but it took an hour on top of the 30 minute train from the airport. The Airport Express to Kowloon and a taxi to Wu Kai Sha would have taken an hour total. We quickly realized that the best way to get to and from the airport is directly by taxi. It takes about 45 minutes, depending on traffic, and taxis are dirt cheap in Hong Kong, compared to other international metropolises. I always liked the Airport Express, but it looks like I will not need it anymore.
Hisoka also had new accommodations in the city. His company used to put him up at the Harbour Grand Kowloon, which has a wonderful swimming pool, great views of Kowloon Bay if your room is on that side, and happens to be in one of my favorite neighborhoods. Between then and now, he got a promotion. Instead of business hotels, he stays in a serviced apartment.
Meeting at my new apartment would have been inconvenient for everyone. So we met at his new apartment in Aldrich Bay, near all the government buildings. The neighborhood faces Kowloon Bay from the opposite direction and is otherwise unfamiliar to me. The apartment is an average sized one bedroom that looks new. I doubt it is as new as my new apartment, but it can't be more than five years old. As with most newer apartments in Hong Kong, the bedroom is tiny. Most of the space is reserved for the living room. A unique feature in the bedroom is a little sitting alcove out of sight from the bed. A more common feature is the tiny balcony just big enough to stand and watch the boats go by, or for two people to stand on if they press together close enough to feel each other's warm, athletic bodies.
The kitchen is large by old Hong Kong standards, which is the new standard. Everything in it is new and shiny, just like every other new kitchen. The hardest thing to find the first time I hunted apartments was a decent kitchen. The Hong Kong market has finally realized the importance of a good kitchen. Since only business travelers are going to stay in this apartment, at least as long as Hisoka's company has the lease, the kitchen might be the least important room. Most of the transient tenants will be eating out for the duration of their visit.
The bathroom has a full bathtub, which is rare in Hong Hong, and a separate but connected shower in the same enclosed space. You can rinse off before soaking in the tub, or vice versa, without getting water all over the place. It also has a waterproof TV, because we live in a time when people need constant electronic noise and distraction.
The best feature of this apartment, by any measure, is the hot tub on the roof. They call it a penthouse apartment, even though there are several in the building with roofs at different levels. Each penthouse has a stairway that leads to its portion of the roof. Our Ma On Shan apartment has the same thing. I think it might be the latest trend. But our stairway leads to an empty roof deck, at least until we put some outdoor furniture up there. The stairway in Hisoka's company apartment leads to a roof deck with a large hot tub and a couple of soft chairs to sit and watch the boats go by.
The roof deck is completely private, if you ignore the thousands of other apartments across the bay. From this building, it is impossible to see onto any of the other decks without climbing up those stairs, which are only accessible from inside the apartment. That makes the hot tub as private as you can get outdoors. It also means any maintenance people have to go through the living room to get onto the roof. Since no one is in the apartment most of the time, that is unlikely to cause any problems. If a family lived there rather than the occasional businessman, that could be disruptive.
It was probably not designed to be a serviced apartment leased out to a private company, but it does the job pretty well. Our Ma On Shan apartment could easily house business travelers, if they did not mind sleeping an hour away from all their big meetings. More importantly, Hisoka's apartment has that hot tub. Few things are better after a long day of corporate bullshit, or a long day of airport bullshit, than soaking in a hot tub up on the roof. Except maybe having someone to soak with you.
Hisoka and I met in May 2018. Our second date was six months after our first. You could say we have been taking things slowly. We had not seen each other in person since 2019, though we keep in contact via the technology of the day. In early 2020, his country was hit hard by the popular virus that was making the rounds. That put an end to his business trips to Hong Kong, or anywhere else. When the Japanese government blocked visitors from China, we knew we would not be seeing other again anytime soon. I moved to Kaohsiung in the middle of 2020. Taiwan was practically unaffected, and to keep it that way, they restricted visitors and quarantined the few people they let in.
Long distance relationships blow. I had a boyfriend who moved to Fuzhou while we lived in Hong Kong. The two cities are in the same country, less than 700 kilometers apart, about the same distance as New York to Raleigh. But you have to fly, go through immigration, and deal with Chinese airport bullshit, which is much easier than American airport bullshit, though still unnecessarily bureaucratic. I would never fly from New York to Raleigh. I can drive it in 8 hours, or two 4 hour drives if you spend a night or two in Washington. Driving from Hong Kong to Fuzhou is not much of an option. You can take a few buses, which would take all day.
Fortunately, Hisoka and I are not in a long distance relationship. We live over 2,000 km apart, and are not anywhere close to monogamous. He is free to do whatever he wants, though he says work keeps him too busy and the virus makes dating harder than ever. I am free to do whatever I want, though I say work keeps me busy and I have minimal interest in Chinese men.
Since I'm white, I am required by the horrendous history of my people to point out that it is not a racial thing. I take far greater issue with the socioeconomic role of women in Chinese culture. I find Hisoka attractive. He is Japanese, which is not at all Chinese, though my people can rarely tell the difference. We tend to think of all East Asians as one giant homogeneous other. More often than not, when people from my country talk about people from East Asia, they simply call everyone Asian, adding India, Israel, and all the -stans into the giant mix. We get upset if people don't know the difference between New York City and Upstate, because they are so different, while blindly lumping all 5 billion Asians together.
Eventually, China made it easier to move around and Japan got their problems under control. By the time Hisoka started going back to Hong Kong on intermittent business trips, I was mostly in Kaohsiung, a much smaller city not frequented nearly as often by foreigners in suits.
Then came our trip to Disneyland. It was timed for my birthday, and not for Hisoka. His presence was a coincidence, and not especially fortuitous. All of his big meetings were during the week Lily and I returned to Taiwan. If Hisoka and I were going to see each other in Hong Kong, it would have to be the weekend before. I had to work that Saturday. The earliest I could go was Sunday, and we were both busy all day Monday. Lily and I were always going to fly to Hong Kong on Sunday. Monday was a big day, so we wanted to get in the day before. Hisoka was originally going to arrive on Sunday, but changed it to Saturday, giving him time to prepare and rest up. While he still had some work to do on Saturday, Sunday was his day off, so he could devote it entirely to me. As it should be.
When Lily and I landed on Sunday, we went straight to our brand new Ma On Shan apartment. Now that I have spent some time in the apartment, I can see how nice it is. Since the estate opened this year, everything is new and clean. Hopefully, they will always maintain the grounds and greenery up to the current standards, but it will never look as new as it does right now. Eventually, corners will get dirty and tiles will crack. Chinese culture does not frown on treating your surroundings like a giant trash can. That the estate is closer to the rich end of the spectrum than the poor end is irrelevant since rich people are no less likely to be slobs here. They simply have more people cleaning up after them.
We also saw how inconvenient the apartment's location is to most of the city. To get to our previous apartments from the airport, we simply took the Airport Express to Kowloon and took a taxi to the apartment. When we lived in Yau Ma Tei, we could walk from the station. For the new apartment, we took the Airport Express to Kowloon, took the MTR to Wu Kai Sha, and walked to the apartment. It was only one MTR line, but it took an hour on top of the 30 minute train from the airport. The Airport Express to Kowloon and a taxi to Wu Kai Sha would have taken an hour total. We quickly realized that the best way to get to and from the airport is directly by taxi. It takes about 45 minutes, depending on traffic, and taxis are dirt cheap in Hong Kong, compared to other international metropolises. I always liked the Airport Express, but it looks like I will not need it anymore.
Hisoka also had new accommodations in the city. His company used to put him up at the Harbour Grand Kowloon, which has a wonderful swimming pool, great views of Kowloon Bay if your room is on that side, and happens to be in one of my favorite neighborhoods. Between then and now, he got a promotion. Instead of business hotels, he stays in a serviced apartment.
Meeting at my new apartment would have been inconvenient for everyone. So we met at his new apartment in Aldrich Bay, near all the government buildings. The neighborhood faces Kowloon Bay from the opposite direction and is otherwise unfamiliar to me. The apartment is an average sized one bedroom that looks new. I doubt it is as new as my new apartment, but it can't be more than five years old. As with most newer apartments in Hong Kong, the bedroom is tiny. Most of the space is reserved for the living room. A unique feature in the bedroom is a little sitting alcove out of sight from the bed. A more common feature is the tiny balcony just big enough to stand and watch the boats go by, or for two people to stand on if they press together close enough to feel each other's warm, athletic bodies.
The kitchen is large by old Hong Kong standards, which is the new standard. Everything in it is new and shiny, just like every other new kitchen. The hardest thing to find the first time I hunted apartments was a decent kitchen. The Hong Kong market has finally realized the importance of a good kitchen. Since only business travelers are going to stay in this apartment, at least as long as Hisoka's company has the lease, the kitchen might be the least important room. Most of the transient tenants will be eating out for the duration of their visit.
The bathroom has a full bathtub, which is rare in Hong Hong, and a separate but connected shower in the same enclosed space. You can rinse off before soaking in the tub, or vice versa, without getting water all over the place. It also has a waterproof TV, because we live in a time when people need constant electronic noise and distraction.
The best feature of this apartment, by any measure, is the hot tub on the roof. They call it a penthouse apartment, even though there are several in the building with roofs at different levels. Each penthouse has a stairway that leads to its portion of the roof. Our Ma On Shan apartment has the same thing. I think it might be the latest trend. But our stairway leads to an empty roof deck, at least until we put some outdoor furniture up there. The stairway in Hisoka's company apartment leads to a roof deck with a large hot tub and a couple of soft chairs to sit and watch the boats go by.
The roof deck is completely private, if you ignore the thousands of other apartments across the bay. From this building, it is impossible to see onto any of the other decks without climbing up those stairs, which are only accessible from inside the apartment. That makes the hot tub as private as you can get outdoors. It also means any maintenance people have to go through the living room to get onto the roof. Since no one is in the apartment most of the time, that is unlikely to cause any problems. If a family lived there rather than the occasional businessman, that could be disruptive.
It was probably not designed to be a serviced apartment leased out to a private company, but it does the job pretty well. Our Ma On Shan apartment could easily house business travelers, if they did not mind sleeping an hour away from all their big meetings. More importantly, Hisoka's apartment has that hot tub. Few things are better after a long day of corporate bullshit, or a long day of airport bullshit, than soaking in a hot tub up on the roof. Except maybe having someone to soak with you.
Thursday, December 2, 2021
International Thanksgiving Birthday
We were back in Kaohsiung before Thanksgiving Thursday. This was our second Thanksgiving in Taiwan, and as usual, we did nothing Thanksgivingish. On Friday, Lily and I saw Chen Hsin Yi's Ten Lines of Poetry to NK at Weiwuying. A multimedia performance, Ten Lines of Poetry to NK is based on the poetry of Chiang Tzu Te and combines the Neo-Classical Chamber Ensemble playing a score by Fang Szu Yu and Yang Chien Ru, choreography by Zhang Ya Ting, and a film by Zhao Chien Ming. There were shows on both Thursday and Friday, so we could have seen them on Thanksgiving, but I got tickets for Friday.
Friday night's dancers were, in order of who has the better agents, Zhang Hsin Yu, Huang Ya Mei, Chiang Chieh Hsi, Hsueh Yu Hsi, Shih Min Szu, Kao Hsin Yu, Su Wan Chu, Tseng Ting Kai, and Wong Tsan Kai.
The Neo-Classical Chamber Ensemble was conducted by Chen Hsin Yi, with Huang Hsin Pi on piano, Tsai Keng Ming and Huang Huan Wei on violin, Wong Yin Jin on viola, Hsiung Jui Hsien on cello, and Chen Yang on percussion.
Ten Lines of Poetry to NK
Act 1: Beauty of the Purest Sense
Act 2: An Autumn Without Lust
Act 3: The Flags of Pretension
Act 4: The Mandates of Mazu
Act 5: The Boiling City
Act 6: Beauty of the Purest Sense II
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
International Birthday Thanksgiving
My birthday was on the Monday before Thanksgiving. This year's Thanksgiving was on the Thursday after my birthday. When they are closer together, we sometimes have a combination birthday/Thanksgiving dinner. Since pretty much no one else in my current life grew up with or cares about Thanksgiving, those tend to be more birthday celebrations to everyone else and Thanksgiving to me. Sometimes, they are several days or even a week apart. Then we have a Thanksgiving dinner that everyone acknowledges is Thanksgiving. This year, they were a few days apart with different activities in different countries.
For my birthday, Lily and I went to Disneyland. It seemed like a pretty good idea at the time. We first met each other while working at Disneyland, what feels like a lifetime ago. She quit in early 2016. I left a year later. Neither of us has been back since 2018.
Hong Kong Disneyland is in the middle of a massive expansion and renovation, including two entire lands. Frozenland was originally going to open in 2020. Now, it is supposed to open next year. Marvel Land is currently scheduled for 2023. Those are not the real names. Frozenland is Arendelle: World of Frozen, built on empty land that was always intended for such an expansion. The other one is something equally stupid, like Iron Man Expo or Marvel Something, built over the former Autopia and empty space. They should call it Avengerland, which would cause all kinds of confusion with Adventureland on the opposite side of the park. As it is, there is no Land in the name. Not that it ever stopped Grizzly Gulch or Mystic Point. But Mystic Point is more of a small neighborhood than a full land. Grizzly Gulch, however, has always been Hong Kong's version of Frontierland.
An obvious difference from our time, that we could clearly see, was the castle. Back in our day, Sleeping Beauty Castle was a copy of the one at Disneyland California. When they announced the remodeling, a lot of people liked the idea of having a castle that did not look just like another park's castle, though there were rumors that the new castle would be more like Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant at Disneyland Paris. Today, it is the Castle of Magical Dreams, and looks more like Cinderella Castle at Disney World in Florida. They spent millions of dollars to go from California to Florida. The fireworks show over the castle was suspended during the renovation. They say it will resume on New Year's Day 2022. So, no fireworks for my birthday.
The park was closed from the Wednesday to Friday before we went. On 17 November, they closed because one cast member or guest tested positive for that popular virus. To avoid any bad publicity, and maybe disinfect the place, they shut down for a few days. They also tested everyone who works there and encouraged visitors to get tested as well. We went fully aware that any number of problems could prevent us from going or lead to a phone call from the government after we left. So far, no one has told us that we came in contact with anyone more contagious than usual.
The closure and hullabaloo over a single person with the plague entering the park made no difference to us, as long as it was open when we showed up. The benefit was that the place was far less crowded than usual. There are no holidays in Hong Kong between Double Nine and Christmas. November is a month of nothing, and generally a good time to go to Disneyland. A November day without fireworks, parades, and after everyone freaks out is even better.
One of the best things about working at Disneyland was that we could get in for free. Now that we no longer work there, we have to pay. Not full price, fortunately. The cheapest one day ticket that includes nothing but entrance to the park is currently HK$639 per person. As high as that sounds, it is still 20% less than Disneyland California, for a slightly smaller park. Food throughout Hong Kong is dirt cheap, except at Disneyland. You can easily spend HK$99 (US$12.75) on a single cafeteria meal. The restaurants are even more. I looked around and people are spending over US$20 (HK$156) per meal at Disneyland California. Ironically, a standard cup of pop is HK$30 and US$3.99, which is practically the same.
No matter what you do, you are going to spend too much money at Disneyland. Unless it is your birthday. Then you can get a birthday button at City Hall on Main Street, USA for free. My complimentary birthday button is destined to take a place of pride in a box in my closet.
At most Disney parks, I used to follow the same general pattern, depending on each park's layout. After a walk up Main Street, USA, I turned left through Adventureland into New Orleans Square and headed straight for Pirates of the Caribbean, followed by the Haunted Mansion. From there, I would travel clockwise, more or less. Hong Kong Disneyland has no Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion or New Orleans Square. There is a Mystic Manor in Mystic Point, which some people like to compare with the Haunted Mansion, but other than a dark ride inside a “house”, they have nothing in common. Mystic Manor is a decent ride in its own way, but it is no Haunted Mansion.
In Hong Kong, instead of turning left from Main Street, USA, I used to turn right into Tomorrowland and head straight for Space Mountain. But then they turned Tomorrowland into Star Wars: Tomorrowland Takeover and changed Space Mountain to Hyperspace Mountain, though the ride is basically the same. Now, Tomorrowland is Stark Expo. At least until the new Marvel Land is finished. Since the two lands will be right next to each other, Marvel rides are bleeding into Tomorrowland as they gradually open. So far, they have the Iron Man Experience, a motion simulation ride like Star Tours, and Ant Man and the Wasp, which is the new version of the old Buzz Lightyear shoot 'em up ride.
On Monday, we headed up Main Street, USA and straight into Fantasyland, which is in the same location at every park. Neither Lily nor I have a particular ride order, but we will always hit it's a small world, the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and Cinderella Carousel. I used to like the Mad Hatter Tea Cups, but my head does not approve of getting dizzy anymore.
Hong Kong's Adventureland only has one real ride, the Jungle Cruise, which takes up most of the lake/river. The rest of the Land is Tarzan's Treehouse, food, and shopping. Just past the Karibuni Marketplace, which is souvenir shopping, is the entrance to Grizzly Gulch, home to my favorite Disney ride, Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars, a faster and less predictable version of Big Thunder Mountain. Geyser Gulch, with its fountain and water pistols, is an excellent place to cool off on a humid summer day. November is not especially hot, making it an even emptier time to go. Frontierland is called Grizzly Gulch in Hong Kong for the same reason it is Westernland in Tokyo. Unlike fantasy, adventure, and tomorrow, frontier does not mean the same thing in Chinese and Japanese as it does in English.
The opposite entrance to Grizzly Gulch leads to Mystic Point and Mystic Manor. Continuing through Mystic Point is Toy Story Land, which has a couple of fast rides for teenagers and a lot of fluff for children. The other entrance to Toy Story Land leads back to Adventureland and Fantasyland, and will lead to Arendelle in the future.
Hong Kong Disneyland is the smallest Disney park in the world. A single day is more than enough time to ride everything we are interested in, sit down to lunch, catch a show or two, and snack too much along the way. A good deal of the space is dedicated to walk-throughs and places to take pictures. The overwhelming majority of guests are Chinese, who have loved to photograph everywhere they go since long before Facebook and Instagram were invented.
Despite the small size, the railroad can be a convenient way to get to a different side of the park on crowded days. When it was first built, it ran around the outside perimeter, just like every other park. But Hong Kong Disneyland was specifically designed to expand gradually over the years. Grizzly Gulch, Mystic Point, and Toy Story Land are on the other side of the tracks. When Arendelle and Marvel Land are finished, half the park will be outside the original perimeter. Instead of surrounding the park, the railroad will be an inner ring. What I always found interesting was that they built Grizzly Gulch, Mystic Point, and Toy Story Land to the south, toward their hotels and a large body of water. If you stay at the Disneyland Hotel, you are only 100 meters from Grizzly Gulch, but of course cannot get in unless you go a kilometer around the corner to the park's entrance. Arendelle and Marvel Land are being built just to the west and north, where there has always been ample room. When I first set foot in Hong Kong Disneyland, I assumed they would expand to the east, where there is a large patch of absolutely nothing. Maybe they are saving that for whatever comes next.
2005-2018
RIP
Wednesday, November 3, 2021
Halloween 2021
This was our second Halloween in Taiwan, and just like last year, no one did anything Halloween related. In Hong Kong, there are enough expats that you can always find someone doing something. People love to dress up in the most outrageous costumes they can imagine, but most simply go as superheroes, pirates or zombies. More often than not, costumes are based on whichever movies/TV shows are the most popular that week. More importantly, Halloween provides another excuse to stay up late and drink entirely too much.
In Taiwan, you would never know it is Halloween. It is just like 端午節 in Ohio.
This year, we celebrated Halloween a little differently. On Saturday, we saw the National Symphony Orchestra at Weiwuying. On Sunday, Halloween, we saw the Taoyuan City Orchestra. The National Symphony Orchestra is based at the National Concert Hall, just next to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall in Taipei. The Taoyuan City Orchestra is, not surprisingly, based in Taoyuan. Both ensembles are currently on tour and hit Kaohsiung on the same weekend.
Saturday's National Symphony Orchestra performance featured Wu Ting Yuh, Li Chia Hao, Tseng Chih Hong, and Tsai Cun Chun on violin, Wu Yen Ten and Lu Chao Ying on viola, Huang Jih Sheng on cello, Tsai Hsin Chieh on bass, and Huang Yi Chun on piano. They performed Sergei Rachmaninoff's Trio élégiaque No 1 in Gm, Antonin Dvorak's Piano Trio No 4 in Em, Bedrich Smetana's String Quartet No 1 in Em, and Leos Janacek's Suite for Strings.
On Halloween, which no one seemed to know or care was Halloween, the Taoyuan City Orchestra was in Kaohsiung as part of their “Immortal Love” tour. They performed Ryan Zen's Sparkling Night Erhu Duet Concerto, Zheng Jih Min & Luo Wei Lun's Legend of the White Snake Dizi Concerto, and He Zhan Hao & Chen Gang Qu's The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto, with Wei Jing Yi on violin, Liang Wen Ting on dizi, Peng Li Ting and Zhang Wei Yun on erhu, and Qu Chun Quan conducting.
These were noticeably dissimilar nights of music. Rachmaninoff, Dvorak, and Smetana are well established in European concert music and have all been dead for quite some time. Ryan Zen, Zheng Jih Min, Luo Wei Lun, He Zhan Hao, and Chen Gang Qu are contemporary and largely unknown outside of Taiwan. The National Symphony Orchestra is generally considered the premiere orchestra in Taiwan. The Taoyuan City Orchestra is considered a youth ensemble, with the best and brightest music students from around the country. If you asked members of the Taoyuan City Orchestra where they want to end up, most would probably name the National Symphony Orchestra.
I fully support student musicians, and love to see the next generation's up and comers before they hit the big time. Far too many of them are better musicians than I could ever hope to be. But Saturday was undeniably a better night of music. Huang Jih Sheng is the best cellist I have seen live since Yo Yo Ma. Or at least Henri Demarquette. Maybe Wang Yung Tzu. I have seen a few cellists lately.
In Taiwan, you would never know it is Halloween. It is just like 端午節 in Ohio.
This year, we celebrated Halloween a little differently. On Saturday, we saw the National Symphony Orchestra at Weiwuying. On Sunday, Halloween, we saw the Taoyuan City Orchestra. The National Symphony Orchestra is based at the National Concert Hall, just next to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall in Taipei. The Taoyuan City Orchestra is, not surprisingly, based in Taoyuan. Both ensembles are currently on tour and hit Kaohsiung on the same weekend.
Saturday's National Symphony Orchestra performance featured Wu Ting Yuh, Li Chia Hao, Tseng Chih Hong, and Tsai Cun Chun on violin, Wu Yen Ten and Lu Chao Ying on viola, Huang Jih Sheng on cello, Tsai Hsin Chieh on bass, and Huang Yi Chun on piano. They performed Sergei Rachmaninoff's Trio élégiaque No 1 in Gm, Antonin Dvorak's Piano Trio No 4 in Em, Bedrich Smetana's String Quartet No 1 in Em, and Leos Janacek's Suite for Strings.
On Halloween, which no one seemed to know or care was Halloween, the Taoyuan City Orchestra was in Kaohsiung as part of their “Immortal Love” tour. They performed Ryan Zen's Sparkling Night Erhu Duet Concerto, Zheng Jih Min & Luo Wei Lun's Legend of the White Snake Dizi Concerto, and He Zhan Hao & Chen Gang Qu's The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto, with Wei Jing Yi on violin, Liang Wen Ting on dizi, Peng Li Ting and Zhang Wei Yun on erhu, and Qu Chun Quan conducting.
These were noticeably dissimilar nights of music. Rachmaninoff, Dvorak, and Smetana are well established in European concert music and have all been dead for quite some time. Ryan Zen, Zheng Jih Min, Luo Wei Lun, He Zhan Hao, and Chen Gang Qu are contemporary and largely unknown outside of Taiwan. The National Symphony Orchestra is generally considered the premiere orchestra in Taiwan. The Taoyuan City Orchestra is considered a youth ensemble, with the best and brightest music students from around the country. If you asked members of the Taoyuan City Orchestra where they want to end up, most would probably name the National Symphony Orchestra.
I fully support student musicians, and love to see the next generation's up and comers before they hit the big time. Far too many of them are better musicians than I could ever hope to be. But Saturday was undeniably a better night of music. Huang Jih Sheng is the best cellist I have seen live since Yo Yo Ma. Or at least Henri Demarquette. Maybe Wang Yung Tzu. I have seen a few cellists lately.
Sunday, October 24, 2021
Lord Of the Land part 4
Previously on the Landlord Show
When we bought the Ma On Shan apartment, we intended to rent it out. The property manager of the Hung Hom apartment found a reliable tenant right away. Ma On Shan is not as conveniently located as Hung Hom, but it is one of those up and coming neighborhoods that all the experts say is going to be jumping any time now.
When we thought about keeping it for ourselves, we did the math. Any time any of us go to Hong Kong, we either spend the night at a friend's house or get a hotel room. One night in a hotel is more expensive than a single day's rent on the apartment, but a full month's rent, every month, is going to bring in far more than we would ever spend from the occasional hotel. It makes no financial sense to keep the apartment empty just so we have a place to stay from time to time.
On the other hand, this is a brand new apartment. The estate was built this year. Unlike any apartment any of us ever had, no previous occupant had ever lived in this one. Chinese apartments come in a vast variety of styles and sizes. The best are always new. For whatever reason, every apartment loses something as soon as someone else has moved in. Virgin apartments are few and far between.
The Kai Tak apartment is also brand new. It is little more than an empty shell at this point, and will not be ready for occupancy until deep into next year. And the location is far more central than Ma On Shan. But it is also our largest and most expensive apartment, and can easily bring in the most rent. Theoretically, we will sell it for much more than the others some day. That apartment was designed for a family to live in full time, not one or two people to pop in from time to time.
Eventually, we came upon a solution. Kevin knows someone who was looking for an apartment, but did not need four bedrooms. I met this guy once for a few minutes, but Kevin worked with him for years. If he has Kevin's seal of approval, that is good enough for me. He readily agreed to pay far less rent and accept any or all of us as occasional roommates. This is a pretty good deal for everyone. He gets a nice, brand new apartment in a new estate for less rent than he would ever pay without roommates, while having the place to himself most of the time. We get a place to stay whenever we are in town. The apartment was practically designed for this arrangement. The master bedroom/bathroom, rented out to Kevin's colleague, are on one side of the living room, while the other bedrooms and bathrooms, for the rest of us, are on the opposite side. By renting it out ourselves, we pay no fees to the property management company, aside from standard maintenance and security. We would still make more money if we rented out the apartment to a family and went to hotels while in town, but now we have a much better place to stay.
I like having a place in town. It seems like such an adult thing to do. I have always preferred to stay in apartments over hotels, even on short trips. Hotels are usually cold and impersonal. And all the business hotels look the same to me. Show me pictures of some of the hotel rooms I have stayed in over the years and I might not be able to tell you which was which. Apartments feel like someone's home. I can easily identify every apartment I have known.
This particular apartment is not especially large, but it has enough space for us. Our tenant's bedroom is almost as big as the others combined. Lily and Kevin get the second biggest bedroom because they are two people. Of the remaining small bedrooms, I claimed the one with a balcony. It has the same view of Plover Cove as the living room balcony, but it leaves a buffer bedroom between them and me. I don't know how thick the interior walls are yet, but I know how long it has been since I had happy time with anyone, so the less I hear theirs, the better. Who got which bathroom was entirely decided by location. The master bathroom is in the master bedroom. The two smaller bathrooms are right next to Lily and Kevin's bedroom and directly across the hall from my bedroom.
Since it is a new building, the swimming pools look as clean as they will ever be. The main pool in the main courtyard is already a popular place for people to sit around and stare at their phones, but it looks like the smaller rooftop pool on one of the towers has never been used. I will change that the next time I go. It is not at all visible from the ground floor, or anywhere other than that tower's roof, so it is possible that not everyone knows about it. But anyone who was given the large packet of information that we got when we bought the place should know exactly where it is. The gym is small, and not at all impressive, but everything in it is new. They have a good variety of equipment for different muscle groups.
One feature that I have never seen in Hong Kong is that every top floor apartment has its own private deck on the roof, other than the tower with the swimming pool. That is probably not a unique feature, but I have never lived on the top floor in Hong Kong. Until now. We share our roof with two other apartments, but each deck is segregated and is completely private, until someone does maintenance on the elevators or HVAC.
The biggest downside to this apartment is the location, if you want to be in the heart of the city. It would take three different MTR lines to get to Central. Or two different buses in about 90 minutes. But I think if the MTR were not an option, I would simply take a taxi. The drive is probably less than 45 minutes in moderate traffic. Coincidentally, the Tuen Ma line that goes to Ma On Shan also goes to the Kai Tak and Hung Hom apartments.
Fortunately, none of us really care about Central. That is where the foreign tourists and new expats go. It is the Times Square of Hong Kong. Everyone finds better places after a month or two in the city. Mong Kok and Yau Ma Tei are my neighborhoods, and I like the Hung Hom to Kwun Tong area. But Lion Rock and Sai Kung Country Park are the best of Hong Kong. Which makes Ma On Shan more convenient than it appears on paper. The nature reserves and country parks are a world away from Central, but Ma On Shan is literally surrounded by nature on all sides. It is also much closer to Shenzhen, making a trip into Mainland China that much easier.
When we bought the Ma On Shan apartment, we intended to rent it out. The property manager of the Hung Hom apartment found a reliable tenant right away. Ma On Shan is not as conveniently located as Hung Hom, but it is one of those up and coming neighborhoods that all the experts say is going to be jumping any time now.
When we thought about keeping it for ourselves, we did the math. Any time any of us go to Hong Kong, we either spend the night at a friend's house or get a hotel room. One night in a hotel is more expensive than a single day's rent on the apartment, but a full month's rent, every month, is going to bring in far more than we would ever spend from the occasional hotel. It makes no financial sense to keep the apartment empty just so we have a place to stay from time to time.
On the other hand, this is a brand new apartment. The estate was built this year. Unlike any apartment any of us ever had, no previous occupant had ever lived in this one. Chinese apartments come in a vast variety of styles and sizes. The best are always new. For whatever reason, every apartment loses something as soon as someone else has moved in. Virgin apartments are few and far between.
The Kai Tak apartment is also brand new. It is little more than an empty shell at this point, and will not be ready for occupancy until deep into next year. And the location is far more central than Ma On Shan. But it is also our largest and most expensive apartment, and can easily bring in the most rent. Theoretically, we will sell it for much more than the others some day. That apartment was designed for a family to live in full time, not one or two people to pop in from time to time.
Eventually, we came upon a solution. Kevin knows someone who was looking for an apartment, but did not need four bedrooms. I met this guy once for a few minutes, but Kevin worked with him for years. If he has Kevin's seal of approval, that is good enough for me. He readily agreed to pay far less rent and accept any or all of us as occasional roommates. This is a pretty good deal for everyone. He gets a nice, brand new apartment in a new estate for less rent than he would ever pay without roommates, while having the place to himself most of the time. We get a place to stay whenever we are in town. The apartment was practically designed for this arrangement. The master bedroom/bathroom, rented out to Kevin's colleague, are on one side of the living room, while the other bedrooms and bathrooms, for the rest of us, are on the opposite side. By renting it out ourselves, we pay no fees to the property management company, aside from standard maintenance and security. We would still make more money if we rented out the apartment to a family and went to hotels while in town, but now we have a much better place to stay.
I like having a place in town. It seems like such an adult thing to do. I have always preferred to stay in apartments over hotels, even on short trips. Hotels are usually cold and impersonal. And all the business hotels look the same to me. Show me pictures of some of the hotel rooms I have stayed in over the years and I might not be able to tell you which was which. Apartments feel like someone's home. I can easily identify every apartment I have known.
This particular apartment is not especially large, but it has enough space for us. Our tenant's bedroom is almost as big as the others combined. Lily and Kevin get the second biggest bedroom because they are two people. Of the remaining small bedrooms, I claimed the one with a balcony. It has the same view of Plover Cove as the living room balcony, but it leaves a buffer bedroom between them and me. I don't know how thick the interior walls are yet, but I know how long it has been since I had happy time with anyone, so the less I hear theirs, the better. Who got which bathroom was entirely decided by location. The master bathroom is in the master bedroom. The two smaller bathrooms are right next to Lily and Kevin's bedroom and directly across the hall from my bedroom.
Since it is a new building, the swimming pools look as clean as they will ever be. The main pool in the main courtyard is already a popular place for people to sit around and stare at their phones, but it looks like the smaller rooftop pool on one of the towers has never been used. I will change that the next time I go. It is not at all visible from the ground floor, or anywhere other than that tower's roof, so it is possible that not everyone knows about it. But anyone who was given the large packet of information that we got when we bought the place should know exactly where it is. The gym is small, and not at all impressive, but everything in it is new. They have a good variety of equipment for different muscle groups.
One feature that I have never seen in Hong Kong is that every top floor apartment has its own private deck on the roof, other than the tower with the swimming pool. That is probably not a unique feature, but I have never lived on the top floor in Hong Kong. Until now. We share our roof with two other apartments, but each deck is segregated and is completely private, until someone does maintenance on the elevators or HVAC.
The biggest downside to this apartment is the location, if you want to be in the heart of the city. It would take three different MTR lines to get to Central. Or two different buses in about 90 minutes. But I think if the MTR were not an option, I would simply take a taxi. The drive is probably less than 45 minutes in moderate traffic. Coincidentally, the Tuen Ma line that goes to Ma On Shan also goes to the Kai Tak and Hung Hom apartments.
Fortunately, none of us really care about Central. That is where the foreign tourists and new expats go. It is the Times Square of Hong Kong. Everyone finds better places after a month or two in the city. Mong Kok and Yau Ma Tei are my neighborhoods, and I like the Hung Hom to Kwun Tong area. But Lion Rock and Sai Kung Country Park are the best of Hong Kong. Which makes Ma On Shan more convenient than it appears on paper. The nature reserves and country parks are a world away from Central, but Ma On Shan is literally surrounded by nature on all sides. It is also much closer to Shenzhen, making a trip into Mainland China that much easier.
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Bereavement Tour part 2
One of the easiest places in Taiwan to get around in the rain is Taipei. Much of it is indoors and the MRT goes everywhere, underground. Taipei is also far more foreigner-friendly than the south. There are “English” signs all over the place and more people speak at least some version of English than anywhere else in the country. Didier wisely chose to go on a day that both Lily and I were available.
Rather than drive, we took the gaotie. The drive from Kaohsiung to Taipei takes at least four hours, under the best conditions. Once there, driving is pointless and parking is expensive. The fastest train takes 90 minutes. Didier's previous train experience was on the xiaotie from Chiayi to Tainan. Otherwise, he got free rides everywhere. For him, the difference between xiaotie and gaotie was like transporting from 1980 to the early 21st century.
One of the Taipei stops is Taipei Main Station, the only gaotie station in a city center. The station directly connects to the two largest MRT lines, the main bus station, and the xiaotie station. It is also an easy walk to several museums, 228 Peace Park, and the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. Chiang Kai Shek was a murderous dictator, but his memorial hall is one of the more impressive architectural landmarks in the country. Had it not already been on Yi Jun's list, I would have recommended it.
Lily recommended busy and bustling sights like Bopiliao and Ximending, both of which are good examples of Taiwan's culture, though from different centuries. Bopiliao (Longshan Temple station exit #3) is an old Qing Dynasty street that has been restored to its natural state, with seismic reinforcement and ample fire exits. Ximending (Ximen station exit #6) is a purely modern pedestrian street. People often claim it looks like Tokyo, but that is only because there are millions of neon lights and youngsters shopping all night. That is where the similarities end. Both streets are close to Longshan Temple (Longshan Temple station exit #1). At 300 years, it is not the oldest temple in Taiwan, but it is probably the most famous.
That would have been an easy afternoon of walking, but Didier wanted to avoid the crowds, and he had already spent a day at Fo Guang Shan. Longshan Temple and Fo Guang Shan are completely different religions, but from his European point of view, they were the same.
I suggested a few museums. They are indoors and never nearly as crowded as the shopping streets. From Taipei Main Station, the Museum of Contemporary Art is one block north, the National Taiwan Museum (NTU Hospital exit #4) is three blocks south, and the National Museum of History (Xiaonanmen exit #3) is a few blocks further south. The National Taiwan Museum is in 228 Peace Park (NTU Hospital exit #1 & #4), which is a nice little park a block away from the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall (Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall exit #5). The National Museum of History is in the Taipei Botanical Garden (Xiaonanmen exit #3), which is a nice little garden just west of Chiang Kai Shek. Walking to any or all of the museums would be easy. Instead, we went to the National Palace Museum in Shilin, which is nowhere near Taipei Main Station. It is, however, the single best place in the world to see Imperial Chinese art. Didier liked the sound of that.
Taipei is known for its nightlife, with the most popular shopping, the most expensive dance clubs, and the most famous night markets in the country. Didier wanted to avoid everything. I find a night of dancing quite relaxing, but he was still afraid of being around too many people while his side of the world was deep into a plague. Even stranger, he was not a fan of dancing. Something he was willing to do was take the turbolift up to the top of Taipei 101 (Taipei 101 exit #4). I think the views are much better in the daytime, if it is not too cloudy, but the lights at night show how large Taipei is, by Taiwan standards, and how tiny it is compared to Tokyo.
We spent the night at the Home Hotel (Taipei 101 exit #4), a small boutique hotel about three blocks from Taipei 101. It was also the hotel I stayed in the first time I went to Taipei. I like it because it is smaller than the typical business hotel and the service is better than anywhere else in the city.
We started the next day with a morning bicycle ride through the riverside parks along the Keelung River. Morning is easily the best time to ride a bicycle in Taipei. Not so much for the weather. It is always going to be hot and humid, no matter what time of day. But afternoons and evenings along the river get far too crowded. Mornings are comparatively empty. There are almost no lights along the winding river, and the packs of stray dogs can get a bit territorial, so the middle of night might not be the best time. There are a variety of hiking options in eastern Taipei, but we did some hiking in Kenting, so Didier was looking for something a little less strenuous.
Had it just been Lily and me, we would have ridden the bicycles from the hotel to the river. It is only a ten minute ride, at most, but it requires navigating busy streets and dodging traffic in a country where right of way is an alien concept. Anyone without a firm understanding of the culture should stick with the clearly marked bicycle paths in areas where cars and trucks are physically blocked from entering. With Didier, we took the MRT to Jiannan (exit #3) and rode through the more scenic parks just north of the airport. Starting from Nangang and riding west until the river ends makes more sense, but Didier is more of a leisurely stroll bicyclist.
The Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall (Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall exit #4) was on Didier's list, so we went there. When there are no performances or events, the hall is little more than a large public space. There are better parks in Taipei, but it is an easy walk from Taipei 101. Before we went to Taipei, I thought Taipei Main Station would be our hub from which to branch out around the city. But since we stayed at a hotel next to Taipei 101, that became our reference point.
Just outside the Sun Yat Sen MRT station (exit #2) is a “German” bakery that I thought Didier might enjoy. Like pretty much everything else in Taiwan, it is far more Taiwanese than whatever other region it claims, but they have large German style pretzels. Lily thinks they are terrible, but she is not German. Neither is Didier, but France is a lot closer than Canada. He had been in Taiwan for a while at this point, and I know of no authentic French restaurants anywhere in the country, so a fake German bakery would have to do. Unfortunately, Didier agreed with Lily about the pretzels. But he liked the brioche.
About a ten minute walk north of the bakery is Little New York Pizza. Lily says it is the best pizza in Taiwan. It certainly looks like New York pizza, and the slices are large enough, but I doubt it tastes anything like New York. It was also not at all French, but our goal was to find food unlike the Taiwanese and Chinese Didier had been eating every day. Pizza, at least real pizza with tomato sauce and cheese, is not at all Chinese.
There are thousands of pizza places in Taipei, if not hundreds. Most of them claim to have the best pizza in the city, county or country. It is as absurd as all the “original” pizza places in New York. Unfortunately, I can say nothing about the taste, but few look like they could ever be the best. Far too many serve “pizza” without cheese or sauce, and for some reason, proofing the dough is considered unlucky. Almost all of them serve something other than pizza as a main course. Most have more traditional Chinese dishes. More than a few have various noodle and/or pasta dishes. Little New York is the only one I know about that only has pizza, aside from fries and maybe garlic bread, but those are acceptable side dishes. In my experience, the best pizza places concentrate on pizza. Anything else on the menu is an afterthought. Big Boyz Pizza in Songshan (Nanjing Fuxing exit #5) has Chicago style, which is unheard of in Taiwan, but their New York pizza looks nothing like New York, and Lily said it was criminally undercooked. If they can't take the time to cook a New York pizza, I can only imagine how the Chicago turns out.
I should probably point out that there is more than one Little New York Pizza in Taipei. The one on Yanji Street, just north of Civic Blvd, is the only one that is all pizza. The others have larger restaurant menus.
From Taipei, we went to Hsinchu. The gaotie only takes 30 minutes, but the Hsinchu station is not actually in the city of Hsinchu. Ordinarily, a trip around Taiwan could easily skip Hsinchu, but Didier heard that Hsinchu is the technological capital of Taiwan. While true, that does little for visitors, unless you want to tour a semiconductor factory. Since Lily knows someone who knows someone whose house we could stay in, we went to Zhubei, which is just across the river from Hinschu. Conveniently and coincidentally, the house was only a ten minute Uber ride from the Hsinchu gaotie station, which is in Zhubei.
I downloaded Uber onto my phone for this trip. I had thought about using it once before, but I have a car in Kaohsiung and use the MRT in Taipei. I almost never have any need for Uber, unless I am going to or coming from the airport. Then I get a ride from someone or take a taxi. While Hsinchu has plenty of taxis, I thought we would spend more time going back and forth between Zhubei and Hsinchu. Having Uber on my phone made sense.
Downloading the app was a bit of a chore. My 4-year-old phone has its original battery. I can remember a time when I would charge it two or three times a week. Now, I keep it plugged in when not in use. Downloading the Uber app sucked up the battery. I had to plug mobile devices into other mobile devices, making everything far less mobile. It was a whole production. The app works exactly as it should, and the technology is pretty impressive. I push a button on my phone and in five minutes or less, someone picks me up and takes me where I want to go. And no cash changes hands. But I have to make sure my battery is above 80% when I use it. I was at 70% when I opened the app one time, and 1% when I gave the driver a 5 star review. I might need to get a new battery.
I hate the entire “citizen critic” system that has infected every aspect of modern life. Everyone wants to give everything a review. Almost no one is qualified to be a professional critic in any given field, and most people are not nearly as nice online as they are in person. I say, unless your driver was smoking or drunk, give him 5 stars. Was the ride perfect in every possible way? Probably not. But there is no need to be a dick about it.
We did pretty much nothing in Hsinchu and spent most of our time in Zhubei. The house where we stayed was in the middle of the restaurant district. There were no French restaurants, of course, but they had a branch of a Taiwanese-Italian restaurant we have in Kaohsiung and a popular pizza place that is generally decent, but not New York.
Hsinchu was nothing like Didier expected, but he took the technological label a little too literally. He thought it was going to be some advanced city with evidence of the future in every direction. Instead, he got a typical Taiwan city that looks pretty much like every other Taiwan city. Taiwan has a lot of positive aspects, but it is definitely not known for its architecture. Go to pretty much any city in western Europe and you will see people taking pictures of random buildings. No one does that in Taiwan. I expected nothing out of Hsinchu, but found a nice little neighborhood across the river.
When Didier finally went home, he had only crossed a fraction of the places he wanted to see off his list. It was an unrealistic list. Taiwan is a small country, but you can never see it all in one visit. He is always free to come back, but I get the impression that this place is simply too depressing for him. Not because he and Yi Jun spent too much time here, but because they did not spend nearly enough.
Rather than drive, we took the gaotie. The drive from Kaohsiung to Taipei takes at least four hours, under the best conditions. Once there, driving is pointless and parking is expensive. The fastest train takes 90 minutes. Didier's previous train experience was on the xiaotie from Chiayi to Tainan. Otherwise, he got free rides everywhere. For him, the difference between xiaotie and gaotie was like transporting from 1980 to the early 21st century.
One of the Taipei stops is Taipei Main Station, the only gaotie station in a city center. The station directly connects to the two largest MRT lines, the main bus station, and the xiaotie station. It is also an easy walk to several museums, 228 Peace Park, and the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. Chiang Kai Shek was a murderous dictator, but his memorial hall is one of the more impressive architectural landmarks in the country. Had it not already been on Yi Jun's list, I would have recommended it.
Lily recommended busy and bustling sights like Bopiliao and Ximending, both of which are good examples of Taiwan's culture, though from different centuries. Bopiliao (Longshan Temple station exit #3) is an old Qing Dynasty street that has been restored to its natural state, with seismic reinforcement and ample fire exits. Ximending (Ximen station exit #6) is a purely modern pedestrian street. People often claim it looks like Tokyo, but that is only because there are millions of neon lights and youngsters shopping all night. That is where the similarities end. Both streets are close to Longshan Temple (Longshan Temple station exit #1). At 300 years, it is not the oldest temple in Taiwan, but it is probably the most famous.
That would have been an easy afternoon of walking, but Didier wanted to avoid the crowds, and he had already spent a day at Fo Guang Shan. Longshan Temple and Fo Guang Shan are completely different religions, but from his European point of view, they were the same.
I suggested a few museums. They are indoors and never nearly as crowded as the shopping streets. From Taipei Main Station, the Museum of Contemporary Art is one block north, the National Taiwan Museum (NTU Hospital exit #4) is three blocks south, and the National Museum of History (Xiaonanmen exit #3) is a few blocks further south. The National Taiwan Museum is in 228 Peace Park (NTU Hospital exit #1 & #4), which is a nice little park a block away from the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall (Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall exit #5). The National Museum of History is in the Taipei Botanical Garden (Xiaonanmen exit #3), which is a nice little garden just west of Chiang Kai Shek. Walking to any or all of the museums would be easy. Instead, we went to the National Palace Museum in Shilin, which is nowhere near Taipei Main Station. It is, however, the single best place in the world to see Imperial Chinese art. Didier liked the sound of that.
Taipei is known for its nightlife, with the most popular shopping, the most expensive dance clubs, and the most famous night markets in the country. Didier wanted to avoid everything. I find a night of dancing quite relaxing, but he was still afraid of being around too many people while his side of the world was deep into a plague. Even stranger, he was not a fan of dancing. Something he was willing to do was take the turbolift up to the top of Taipei 101 (Taipei 101 exit #4). I think the views are much better in the daytime, if it is not too cloudy, but the lights at night show how large Taipei is, by Taiwan standards, and how tiny it is compared to Tokyo.
We spent the night at the Home Hotel (Taipei 101 exit #4), a small boutique hotel about three blocks from Taipei 101. It was also the hotel I stayed in the first time I went to Taipei. I like it because it is smaller than the typical business hotel and the service is better than anywhere else in the city.
We started the next day with a morning bicycle ride through the riverside parks along the Keelung River. Morning is easily the best time to ride a bicycle in Taipei. Not so much for the weather. It is always going to be hot and humid, no matter what time of day. But afternoons and evenings along the river get far too crowded. Mornings are comparatively empty. There are almost no lights along the winding river, and the packs of stray dogs can get a bit territorial, so the middle of night might not be the best time. There are a variety of hiking options in eastern Taipei, but we did some hiking in Kenting, so Didier was looking for something a little less strenuous.
Had it just been Lily and me, we would have ridden the bicycles from the hotel to the river. It is only a ten minute ride, at most, but it requires navigating busy streets and dodging traffic in a country where right of way is an alien concept. Anyone without a firm understanding of the culture should stick with the clearly marked bicycle paths in areas where cars and trucks are physically blocked from entering. With Didier, we took the MRT to Jiannan (exit #3) and rode through the more scenic parks just north of the airport. Starting from Nangang and riding west until the river ends makes more sense, but Didier is more of a leisurely stroll bicyclist.
The Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall (Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall exit #4) was on Didier's list, so we went there. When there are no performances or events, the hall is little more than a large public space. There are better parks in Taipei, but it is an easy walk from Taipei 101. Before we went to Taipei, I thought Taipei Main Station would be our hub from which to branch out around the city. But since we stayed at a hotel next to Taipei 101, that became our reference point.
Just outside the Sun Yat Sen MRT station (exit #2) is a “German” bakery that I thought Didier might enjoy. Like pretty much everything else in Taiwan, it is far more Taiwanese than whatever other region it claims, but they have large German style pretzels. Lily thinks they are terrible, but she is not German. Neither is Didier, but France is a lot closer than Canada. He had been in Taiwan for a while at this point, and I know of no authentic French restaurants anywhere in the country, so a fake German bakery would have to do. Unfortunately, Didier agreed with Lily about the pretzels. But he liked the brioche.
About a ten minute walk north of the bakery is Little New York Pizza. Lily says it is the best pizza in Taiwan. It certainly looks like New York pizza, and the slices are large enough, but I doubt it tastes anything like New York. It was also not at all French, but our goal was to find food unlike the Taiwanese and Chinese Didier had been eating every day. Pizza, at least real pizza with tomato sauce and cheese, is not at all Chinese.
There are thousands of pizza places in Taipei, if not hundreds. Most of them claim to have the best pizza in the city, county or country. It is as absurd as all the “original” pizza places in New York. Unfortunately, I can say nothing about the taste, but few look like they could ever be the best. Far too many serve “pizza” without cheese or sauce, and for some reason, proofing the dough is considered unlucky. Almost all of them serve something other than pizza as a main course. Most have more traditional Chinese dishes. More than a few have various noodle and/or pasta dishes. Little New York is the only one I know about that only has pizza, aside from fries and maybe garlic bread, but those are acceptable side dishes. In my experience, the best pizza places concentrate on pizza. Anything else on the menu is an afterthought. Big Boyz Pizza in Songshan (Nanjing Fuxing exit #5) has Chicago style, which is unheard of in Taiwan, but their New York pizza looks nothing like New York, and Lily said it was criminally undercooked. If they can't take the time to cook a New York pizza, I can only imagine how the Chicago turns out.
I should probably point out that there is more than one Little New York Pizza in Taipei. The one on Yanji Street, just north of Civic Blvd, is the only one that is all pizza. The others have larger restaurant menus.
From Taipei, we went to Hsinchu. The gaotie only takes 30 minutes, but the Hsinchu station is not actually in the city of Hsinchu. Ordinarily, a trip around Taiwan could easily skip Hsinchu, but Didier heard that Hsinchu is the technological capital of Taiwan. While true, that does little for visitors, unless you want to tour a semiconductor factory. Since Lily knows someone who knows someone whose house we could stay in, we went to Zhubei, which is just across the river from Hinschu. Conveniently and coincidentally, the house was only a ten minute Uber ride from the Hsinchu gaotie station, which is in Zhubei.
I downloaded Uber onto my phone for this trip. I had thought about using it once before, but I have a car in Kaohsiung and use the MRT in Taipei. I almost never have any need for Uber, unless I am going to or coming from the airport. Then I get a ride from someone or take a taxi. While Hsinchu has plenty of taxis, I thought we would spend more time going back and forth between Zhubei and Hsinchu. Having Uber on my phone made sense.
Downloading the app was a bit of a chore. My 4-year-old phone has its original battery. I can remember a time when I would charge it two or three times a week. Now, I keep it plugged in when not in use. Downloading the Uber app sucked up the battery. I had to plug mobile devices into other mobile devices, making everything far less mobile. It was a whole production. The app works exactly as it should, and the technology is pretty impressive. I push a button on my phone and in five minutes or less, someone picks me up and takes me where I want to go. And no cash changes hands. But I have to make sure my battery is above 80% when I use it. I was at 70% when I opened the app one time, and 1% when I gave the driver a 5 star review. I might need to get a new battery.
I hate the entire “citizen critic” system that has infected every aspect of modern life. Everyone wants to give everything a review. Almost no one is qualified to be a professional critic in any given field, and most people are not nearly as nice online as they are in person. I say, unless your driver was smoking or drunk, give him 5 stars. Was the ride perfect in every possible way? Probably not. But there is no need to be a dick about it.
We did pretty much nothing in Hsinchu and spent most of our time in Zhubei. The house where we stayed was in the middle of the restaurant district. There were no French restaurants, of course, but they had a branch of a Taiwanese-Italian restaurant we have in Kaohsiung and a popular pizza place that is generally decent, but not New York.
Hsinchu was nothing like Didier expected, but he took the technological label a little too literally. He thought it was going to be some advanced city with evidence of the future in every direction. Instead, he got a typical Taiwan city that looks pretty much like every other Taiwan city. Taiwan has a lot of positive aspects, but it is definitely not known for its architecture. Go to pretty much any city in western Europe and you will see people taking pictures of random buildings. No one does that in Taiwan. I expected nothing out of Hsinchu, but found a nice little neighborhood across the river.
When Didier finally went home, he had only crossed a fraction of the places he wanted to see off his list. It was an unrealistic list. Taiwan is a small country, but you can never see it all in one visit. He is always free to come back, but I get the impression that this place is simply too depressing for him. Not because he and Yi Jun spent too much time here, but because they did not spend nearly enough.
Wednesday, October 13, 2021
Bereavement Tour part 1
Didier is still in Taiwan. There is still paperwork that needs to be filled out and Yi Jun's family is currently arguing over her life insurance. I think everything should go to her children, as she specifically requested. But it is not up to me. Didier is also trying to avoid going back home without his wife. It will happen sooner or later, but he is not ready.
Though I only met Didier once before Yi Jun died, I am the closest thing he has to a friend in Taiwan. He knows Yi Jun's family and me, though he does not know them especially well. It kind of seems like Yi Jun did not particularly want to live in Taiwan. When she was married to an American, she lived in Michigan. When she was married to Didier, she lived in France and Ohio. Yi Jun and Didier used to visit Taiwan during the New Year and special occasions, but Didier was largely unfamiliar with the culture. In me, he saw someone who knows the culture and can speak to him in a language he understands. I like to think I can speak French on a good day, but we mostly communicate in English. And I knew Yi Jun in a way that makes more sense to him. Her family knew young Yi Jun. We knew the more modern, adult version.
During Yi Jun's last round of treatment, Didier stayed in her sister's house in Chiayi and the hospital hotel. After the funeral, there was no point in staying at the hospital, and he did not want to spend any time in the sister's house, so he went to Tainan. Getting from Chiayi to Tainan is pretty easy, and Didier is comfortable with trains, but he had no idea how to get around once he was there. His phone call started our grand tour of Taiwan.
Before going back to France, and possibly never coming to Taiwan again, Didier wanted to see all the sights that Yi Jun talked about. Getting around the west coast of Taiwan is pretty easy without a car. The slow trains are not at all on time, but they go to pretty much any city you would ever want to see, and most stations are downtown. The high speed train is far more reliable, cleaner, and comfortable, but only one high speed station is in a city center. Most are not even in the largest city of their respective counties. The stations were built out in the countryside where there were large enough patches of empty land. Had Didier taken the gaotie from Chiayi to Tainan, he would have actually gone from Taibao to Gueiren. Chiayi's station was convenient, in his case, since Yi Jun's hospital and sister are in Chiayi County rather than Chiayi City, but Tainan's station is practically in Kaohsiung. I think the hospital was built close to the Chiayi (Taibao) station on purpose. Most stations have free shuttles that take you to the city, and there are ample taxis at every station, but every shuttle and almost every taxi requires at least some knowledge of the language. Foreigners are better off with the xiaotie, which has stations in the middle of each city, though all announced changes are in Chinese.
Today's language lesson: “xiaotie”™ is not a real word. I made it up. The high speed train is 高鐵 (gaotie). The slow speed train is actually 臺鐵 (taitie). Somewhere along the line, I started calling it 小鐵 (xiaotie), which is a bit of a pun, though not a very good one. 高 (gao) and 小 (xiao) are opposites, and rhyme. 臺 is short for 臺灣 (Taiwan), and does not even come close to rhyming.
Didier was going to travel around Taiwan alone. I thought that might not be the best idea. It is certainly possible, but probably not ideal while grieving and not entirely thinking straight. When I offered to help, he assumed I only meant guiding him around Kaohsiung and that he should take the train from Tainan, even though there were places in Tainan on his list. What he did not realize was that I could drive to his Tainan hotel in under 45 minutes. At his hotel, he showed me his list of all the places he wanted to go. He vastly underestimated both the size of Taiwan and the travel times by train. It is a relatively small island, but he had enough sights for a month of travel. I had a car that could reduce travel times, but I also had a job that required my participation.
I knew he was never going to see everything on his list, so I concentrated on the highlights. We were already in Tainan, so we started there. Tainan is an old city and has a great deal of historical sights. Most of them are outdoors and it was raining ropes. Didier thought it was a typhoon. It was certainly typhoon season, but this was a light drizzle by comparison. Instead of Chihkanlou, or Anping, or any of the temples, we went to the Chimei Museum. The outdoor grounds are nice, but the indoor museum is what you want to see.
I had to go to work, so I was going to Kaohsiung with or without Didier. He had a lot of Kaohsiung on his list, so he took the free ride.
I have lived in Kaohsiung for a little over a year. There are parts of the city I have yet to see myself, but I know enough to show someone around. From a French point of view, Kaohsiung is a large, crowded city. From a Chinese point of view, Kaohsiung is pretty small. To experience the culture, you have to go to night markets, food stalls, and places where people are generally packed together like lemmings. Didier is from France, where they are struggling with a bit of a plague right now, and most recently lived in the United States, which refuses to settle for anything but first place. The last thing he wanted was to be in a crowd, especially in a culture that considers it unlucky to cover one's mouth while coughing or sneezing.
So I took him to Fo Guang Shan. Outside of ceremonies and special occasions, the monastery is rarely crowded, and the museum is large enough to seem empty on most weekdays. It is also probably a pretty great place to experience right after burying your wife.
I may not be the best guide for Kaohsiung, but I know a thing or two about Fo Guang Shan. I spent some time there last year and know a few of the monks personally. I introduced Didier to my former laoshi and reminisced around campus while they talked about the meaning of life and death for a few hours. Didier still has to go home without his wife, but at least he had an experienced shoulder to cry on and heard something more meaningful than the usual platitudes most of us never adequately know how to express. Didier felt a little better, and we went to the museum where other monks gave him a tour through a few thousand years of Buddhism. When we went to the monastery, it was lightly raining and looked like there was more on the way. When we walked out of the museum, the sun was shining and birds were happy. Didier saw it as a sign. I saw it as autumn weather.
One of the places Yi Jun talked about the most was Kenting. Taiwanese love Kenting. It is the Hawaii of Taiwan. Having been to both Hawaii and Kenting, I disagree. Kenting is in a tropical monsoon climate zone, making it far hotter and wetter than Honolulu. When I was in Hawaii, it would rain for an hour at most and another hour later, you could never tell it was anything but sunny. If it is raining in Kenting, you will not see any sun that day. Hurricanes almost never hit Honolulu. Typhoons hit Kenting all the time.
But it was at the top of Didier's list and only a two hour drive. Most people go on the weekends, but my days off are during the week. We went on a Tuesday. The last time I went to Kenting was a Saturday in the middle of summer. As it turns out, the place is far less crowded on a Tuesday after the school year starts.
The beaches in Kenting are easily the most popular in the entire country. I have no idea why. There is nothing particularly wrong with them, but they are small, usually crowded, and swimming is either highly discouraged or completely illegal. Most people just go to take pictures for the Facebook. Sunset is the popular time, even though the beaches face south and east. Didier is from France, which has a few nice beaches down south and some enormous, sprawling beaches up north. He was not impressed with Kenting.
We spent most of our Kenting time at the national park. Even with the tropical climate and intermittent rain, it is an easy park to hike, with ample trails and paved staircases. You could easily spend a few days exploring the entire park, but we had a few hours. We had no plans to spend the night in Kenting, and I had to show Didier the night market.
Despite the popularity of the beaches, most people go to Kenting for the night life. Several streets downtown become a large night market after sunset. Normal shopping streets during the day take on a carnival atmosphere at night. You can play old style arcade games, like that one where you try to throw a ping pong ball into a tiny fish bowl with an opening too small to fit a ping pong ball, or the one where you throw dull darts at underinflated balloons. Most people stick to buying cheap crap. And, of course, everyone goes for the food. It is not a night market without countless food stalls selling everything from 愛玉 to 仙草. Didier avoided the night markets in Kaohsiung, so Kenting's night scene was essential.
Kenting has plenty of hotels, most of which have plenty of rooms available this time of year. But it is only a two hour drive to Kaohsiung and I was busy the next day, so we did not spend the night.
Hualien was on Didier's list, and I recommend Taroko Gorge wholeheartedly. It is easily Taiwan's best nature site. It is also about as far from Kaohsiung as you can get. Leaving from Kenting would be much easier, though not faster. Whether Didier decided to go to Haulien or not, I was unavailable. I could have put him on the xiaotie, but then he would be on his own in a place that requires some form of transportation, or at least a bicycle. The rainy season technically ends in September, but it has been dragging on longer this year, and since hiking Taroko Gorge in the rain is not the best idea, he decided against it.
I like Didier's idea of traveling around the country and seeing all the sights Yi Jun talked about, but she died at the end of the rainy season and the beginning of the school year. Most vacation days are used up by the end of summer. At any other time of year, I probably could have found people to take him to most of the places on his list.
Though I only met Didier once before Yi Jun died, I am the closest thing he has to a friend in Taiwan. He knows Yi Jun's family and me, though he does not know them especially well. It kind of seems like Yi Jun did not particularly want to live in Taiwan. When she was married to an American, she lived in Michigan. When she was married to Didier, she lived in France and Ohio. Yi Jun and Didier used to visit Taiwan during the New Year and special occasions, but Didier was largely unfamiliar with the culture. In me, he saw someone who knows the culture and can speak to him in a language he understands. I like to think I can speak French on a good day, but we mostly communicate in English. And I knew Yi Jun in a way that makes more sense to him. Her family knew young Yi Jun. We knew the more modern, adult version.
During Yi Jun's last round of treatment, Didier stayed in her sister's house in Chiayi and the hospital hotel. After the funeral, there was no point in staying at the hospital, and he did not want to spend any time in the sister's house, so he went to Tainan. Getting from Chiayi to Tainan is pretty easy, and Didier is comfortable with trains, but he had no idea how to get around once he was there. His phone call started our grand tour of Taiwan.
Before going back to France, and possibly never coming to Taiwan again, Didier wanted to see all the sights that Yi Jun talked about. Getting around the west coast of Taiwan is pretty easy without a car. The slow trains are not at all on time, but they go to pretty much any city you would ever want to see, and most stations are downtown. The high speed train is far more reliable, cleaner, and comfortable, but only one high speed station is in a city center. Most are not even in the largest city of their respective counties. The stations were built out in the countryside where there were large enough patches of empty land. Had Didier taken the gaotie from Chiayi to Tainan, he would have actually gone from Taibao to Gueiren. Chiayi's station was convenient, in his case, since Yi Jun's hospital and sister are in Chiayi County rather than Chiayi City, but Tainan's station is practically in Kaohsiung. I think the hospital was built close to the Chiayi (Taibao) station on purpose. Most stations have free shuttles that take you to the city, and there are ample taxis at every station, but every shuttle and almost every taxi requires at least some knowledge of the language. Foreigners are better off with the xiaotie, which has stations in the middle of each city, though all announced changes are in Chinese.
Today's language lesson: “xiaotie”™ is not a real word. I made it up. The high speed train is 高鐵 (gaotie). The slow speed train is actually 臺鐵 (taitie). Somewhere along the line, I started calling it 小鐵 (xiaotie), which is a bit of a pun, though not a very good one. 高 (gao) and 小 (xiao) are opposites, and rhyme. 臺 is short for 臺灣 (Taiwan), and does not even come close to rhyming.
Didier was going to travel around Taiwan alone. I thought that might not be the best idea. It is certainly possible, but probably not ideal while grieving and not entirely thinking straight. When I offered to help, he assumed I only meant guiding him around Kaohsiung and that he should take the train from Tainan, even though there were places in Tainan on his list. What he did not realize was that I could drive to his Tainan hotel in under 45 minutes. At his hotel, he showed me his list of all the places he wanted to go. He vastly underestimated both the size of Taiwan and the travel times by train. It is a relatively small island, but he had enough sights for a month of travel. I had a car that could reduce travel times, but I also had a job that required my participation.
I knew he was never going to see everything on his list, so I concentrated on the highlights. We were already in Tainan, so we started there. Tainan is an old city and has a great deal of historical sights. Most of them are outdoors and it was raining ropes. Didier thought it was a typhoon. It was certainly typhoon season, but this was a light drizzle by comparison. Instead of Chihkanlou, or Anping, or any of the temples, we went to the Chimei Museum. The outdoor grounds are nice, but the indoor museum is what you want to see.
I had to go to work, so I was going to Kaohsiung with or without Didier. He had a lot of Kaohsiung on his list, so he took the free ride.
I have lived in Kaohsiung for a little over a year. There are parts of the city I have yet to see myself, but I know enough to show someone around. From a French point of view, Kaohsiung is a large, crowded city. From a Chinese point of view, Kaohsiung is pretty small. To experience the culture, you have to go to night markets, food stalls, and places where people are generally packed together like lemmings. Didier is from France, where they are struggling with a bit of a plague right now, and most recently lived in the United States, which refuses to settle for anything but first place. The last thing he wanted was to be in a crowd, especially in a culture that considers it unlucky to cover one's mouth while coughing or sneezing.
So I took him to Fo Guang Shan. Outside of ceremonies and special occasions, the monastery is rarely crowded, and the museum is large enough to seem empty on most weekdays. It is also probably a pretty great place to experience right after burying your wife.
I may not be the best guide for Kaohsiung, but I know a thing or two about Fo Guang Shan. I spent some time there last year and know a few of the monks personally. I introduced Didier to my former laoshi and reminisced around campus while they talked about the meaning of life and death for a few hours. Didier still has to go home without his wife, but at least he had an experienced shoulder to cry on and heard something more meaningful than the usual platitudes most of us never adequately know how to express. Didier felt a little better, and we went to the museum where other monks gave him a tour through a few thousand years of Buddhism. When we went to the monastery, it was lightly raining and looked like there was more on the way. When we walked out of the museum, the sun was shining and birds were happy. Didier saw it as a sign. I saw it as autumn weather.
One of the places Yi Jun talked about the most was Kenting. Taiwanese love Kenting. It is the Hawaii of Taiwan. Having been to both Hawaii and Kenting, I disagree. Kenting is in a tropical monsoon climate zone, making it far hotter and wetter than Honolulu. When I was in Hawaii, it would rain for an hour at most and another hour later, you could never tell it was anything but sunny. If it is raining in Kenting, you will not see any sun that day. Hurricanes almost never hit Honolulu. Typhoons hit Kenting all the time.
But it was at the top of Didier's list and only a two hour drive. Most people go on the weekends, but my days off are during the week. We went on a Tuesday. The last time I went to Kenting was a Saturday in the middle of summer. As it turns out, the place is far less crowded on a Tuesday after the school year starts.
The beaches in Kenting are easily the most popular in the entire country. I have no idea why. There is nothing particularly wrong with them, but they are small, usually crowded, and swimming is either highly discouraged or completely illegal. Most people just go to take pictures for the Facebook. Sunset is the popular time, even though the beaches face south and east. Didier is from France, which has a few nice beaches down south and some enormous, sprawling beaches up north. He was not impressed with Kenting.
We spent most of our Kenting time at the national park. Even with the tropical climate and intermittent rain, it is an easy park to hike, with ample trails and paved staircases. You could easily spend a few days exploring the entire park, but we had a few hours. We had no plans to spend the night in Kenting, and I had to show Didier the night market.
Despite the popularity of the beaches, most people go to Kenting for the night life. Several streets downtown become a large night market after sunset. Normal shopping streets during the day take on a carnival atmosphere at night. You can play old style arcade games, like that one where you try to throw a ping pong ball into a tiny fish bowl with an opening too small to fit a ping pong ball, or the one where you throw dull darts at underinflated balloons. Most people stick to buying cheap crap. And, of course, everyone goes for the food. It is not a night market without countless food stalls selling everything from 愛玉 to 仙草. Didier avoided the night markets in Kaohsiung, so Kenting's night scene was essential.
Kenting has plenty of hotels, most of which have plenty of rooms available this time of year. But it is only a two hour drive to Kaohsiung and I was busy the next day, so we did not spend the night.
Hualien was on Didier's list, and I recommend Taroko Gorge wholeheartedly. It is easily Taiwan's best nature site. It is also about as far from Kaohsiung as you can get. Leaving from Kenting would be much easier, though not faster. Whether Didier decided to go to Haulien or not, I was unavailable. I could have put him on the xiaotie, but then he would be on his own in a place that requires some form of transportation, or at least a bicycle. The rainy season technically ends in September, but it has been dragging on longer this year, and since hiking Taroko Gorge in the rain is not the best idea, he decided against it.
I like Didier's idea of traveling around the country and seeing all the sights Yi Jun talked about, but she died at the end of the rainy season and the beginning of the school year. Most vacation days are used up by the end of summer. At any other time of year, I probably could have found people to take him to most of the places on his list.
Thursday, September 30, 2021
Huang Yi Jun
Huang Yi Jun was diagnosed with T-cell prolymphocytic leukemia at the beginning of September. She died in the middle of September. Her funeral was Saturday.
Yi Jun and I met at a medical facility in April 2020. We were both trying to gain weight. My weight loss was from a TBI a few years earlier. Hers was from leukemia, though no one knew it at the time. She was tested for a wide variety of ailments, but apparently not the type of leukemia she had. Neither of us gained any weight at the camp, but we became friends.
Yi Jun was born and raised in Chiayi Hsien, Taiwan. She was always a good student and got into the best schools. She studied chemical engineering at National Taiwan University, which is generally considered the best school in Taiwan, according to people at National Taiwan University. After graduating, she moved to Michigan, started her career, got married, and had a daughter.
English was never her best subject, but she had a high enough ranking job, and more importantly, made enough money that she faced less discrimination than the average expat in the United States. Her American husband, on the other hand, often complained about her poor English. Naturally, he never bothered to learn Chinese. They also had the usual cultural issues. Americans often have problems with people from other states. Taiwan might as well be on a different planet. I never met her ex-husband, but from what she told me, he sounded like a typical xenophobe. Why he ever married a Taiwanese is anyone's guess. My assumption is that he thought she would be a passive and obedient wife, which is a bizarre stereotype in the United States that is as far removed from reality as their views on international relations and the shape of the Earth.
Four years after getting married, they were divorced. When Yi Jun decided to move back to Taiwan, there was a custody battle for their daughter. Since she wanted to take her child, who was born in the United States and far too young to make any decisions for herself, to one of them foreigner countries that don't speak no English, the court gave the father full custody.
Before fully putting her life back together, Yi Jun met a man from France. I would have advised against jumping in the pool so soon after almost drowning, but I did not know her at the time, so she moved to France and married Didier. Ironically, this husband got a job in Ohio. Yi Jun knew she could easily find a job in the United States with her chemical engineering background, and Ohio was much closer to her daughter than Taiwan or France, so she moved again. Fortunately, this husband was French, so their cultural differences were never seen as a negative.
When she started to get sick and lose weight, they spent a small fortune on doctors and tests. One doctor told her it was stress. Several treated her as if she had a learning disability because she was a foreigner who spoke English poorly, never mind that she was fluent in twice as many languages as they were. Every doctor who failed to diagnose her leukemia sent a bill and demanded to be paid in full. Eventually, Yi Jun and Didier went to Taiwan, where no one has to go bankrupt to get healthcare. Her doctor sent her to the Taipei weight camp, where we met.
A few days after getting a diagnosis, she started chemotherapy for the sole purpose of wiping out her immune system. Chemotherapy does little to nothing for leukemia, but they used it to prepare her body for the stem cell transplant. I was surprised by how quickly they found a bone marrow donor. Since the doctors never had to wait around for any insurance company approval, they moved quickly at every stage of her treatment. It was as if treating her was more important than filling out the right paperwork. When she went home from the hospital, everyone was optimistic. T-cell prolymphocytic leukemia has a ridiculously low survival rate, but there were no complications from the stem cell transplant. Everything was looking good.
Despite feeling terrible, Yi Jun was worried about looking terrible. She was always a pretty girl who looked younger than she really was. When I met her, I thought she was in her mid twenties. After chemo, she looked middle aged. We talked a lot about losing our hair. Mine had grown back and was getting longer every day by the time she lost hers. It is amazing how important hair is to young women. You expect men to go bald, but a woman without hair is a shock. Yi Jun and I both went from having long hair most of our lives to suddenly having nothing. She wore a wig pretty much all the time. I used to wear a lot of hats.
We talked about recovery. Mine was slow and painful, and she took comfort in the long, detailed stories that make most people's eyes glaze over. A craniotomy is absolutely nothing like cancer, but she liked the parts about overcoming the odds and getting myself back to full speed, or at least 90%. She was competitive enough to think that if I could do it, she could, too.
Yi Jun's sister told me over the phone that Yi Jun died. I would have preferred to hear that in person, but at least it was not a text message. I only knew her for 17 months, so I was probably pretty far down the list of people to call. All things considered, it was nice of her sister to let me know.
Yi Jun's husband was in Taiwan during the last round of treatment and was with her in the hospital when she died, luckily. He speaks no Chinese and her family speaks no French. At least the doctors could speak to him in English. But it was the family that planned the funeral, and none of them knew more than a few words or phrases in English. I was drafted as their translator.
Yi Jun and Didier lived in France and the United States. Yi Jun mostly lived away from Taiwan the last ten years of her life. But there was never any question among her family that her funeral would be in Taiwan and everything would be done the Taiwan way. This was news to Didier, but he was in no position to argue. He later told me that he would have preferred taking her back to France and doing everything the French way, but by then it was too late.
I have only lived in Taiwan for 16 months; less time than I knew Yi Jun. I am not the first person you go to for information or explanations about Taiwan funeral practices. In fact, Yi Jun's was my first Taiwan funeral. Yet I was supposed to tell Didier what was going on before it even happened. The first of many awkward situations was when I read her obituary to him. It was written by her family and pretty standard as far as obituaries go. It mentioned when and where she was born and when and how she died. It mentioned her parents more than you usually see in Western obituaries. It mentioned that she was survived by her husband, two sons, and daughter. This part was a little confusing. Yi Jun had a daughter with her first husband and no children with Didier. They were married less than three years when she got sick. Didier assumed I was translating the obituary incorrectly, but it very clearly said two sons and one daughter, and gave their names.
A quick phone call to her sister cleared everything up. I did not know her sister particularly well, but she was my liaison for all things funeral. It turns out, according to her sister, that Yi Jun married a Taiwanese at 18, had two sons, and was divorced by 21. Her American husband, who I thought was her first, was her second. They got married when Yi Jun was 24 and divorced at 28. Didier was her third husband. I have no idea why Yi Jun never told me about her Taiwanese husband, or her two sons, but we only knew each other for 17 months. I never knew her when she was healthy. Then again, she told me plenty about her American husband and daughter.
I was stunned by this new information, but I could see where maybe she did not go around telling everyone that she got married too young and it ended poorly. And maybe it was easy to talk to me about the American husband because I have some experience with failed American relationships. But the real shock was how shocked Didier was to learn about the Taiwanese husband and two sons. She never mentioned them to him either. He knew all about the American husband and daughter, including plenty of detailed stories Yi Jun never told me, but she never told her French husband that he was number three. Didier had a lot of questions, but I had none of the answers. He would have to talk to Yi Jun's sister, and that would require me translating. Somehow, I landed in the middle of a Taiwanese telenovela. We tried to set up a lunch before the funeral, but everyone was too busy. To date, this conversation has not happened. I think her family is avoiding Didier as politely as possible. They knew a Yi Jun that he never met.
Fortunately, the funeral was straightforward and pretty intuitive. The funeral home put the body in a casket, everyone came and sat in the audience, a few people gave speeches, including her oldest son – who was not at all a shock to most of the people in attendance, a small choir sang “Amazing Grace” and a few Taiwan folk songs, they showed a low quality video that looked like a 1980s VHS tape of people who could not be there in person giving their condolences, the family put flowers on Yi Jun's body, everyone else lined up to cover her with flowers, the funeral people dramatically carried the coffin into a waiting hearse with everyone following in a processional, and most of the guests went home. It was only after they took the body away that Taiwan custom started to diverge from what Didier and I consider routine.
None of Yi Jun's ex-husbands were at the funeral. Both of her teenage sons were there, but her daughter was not. Yi Jun and her daughter never had the best relationship, and as an American, the daughter would have been subject to some strict entry requirements had she tried to come to Taiwan. A few of Yi Jun's Ohio and Michigan friends and colleagues recorded messages for the low quality video, but her daughter was not among them.
Only the family followed the hearse away from the funeral. Since I was Didier's translator, I came along for the ride. Very few bodies are buried whole in Taiwan, so we did not go to a cemetery to inter the coffin. We went to the local crematorium. I had warned Didier about this ahead of time, and cremation is not so unusual in his country, but I could not warn him about how they would prepare the body because no one ever told me. When they asked him to help take Yi Jun out of the coffin and wash her body, we were both surprised. I had no idea this was part of Taiwanese culture. Most people around here never talk about funeral rites, until it is time to get down to business. I like to think I am pretty open minded when it comes to cultures different from my own, but I was more than a little uncomfortable watching Didier and a few female relatives wash the lifeless corpse of my friend. Didier was pretty much horrified, but he went along with it because it was expected of him, and he mostly walked around in a daze that day.
Mercifully, we did not have to personally set the body on fire. They put her in a cheaper coffin, since the one at the funeral was a ceremonial rental, and machines did most of the work. We were not even in the same building when they fired up the oven.
I had a chance to warn Didier about the next part, because I knew it was going to happen. Once cremated, the remains were brought out to the family, where they literally picked her bones. In Taiwan, just like China, and probably more than a few East Asian countries, the bones are not pulverized to a fine dust and placed in an urn. They are scattered on a large tray where immediate family can pick out the bone fragments they want to keep. Most of her relatives will bury their portion of Yi Jun in their local cemetery and visit her every year during 清明節 (Tomb Sweeping Day). Didier's plan is to take his Yi Jun bones back to France and bury her after a more familiar memorial service.
The point of a funeral, as far as I know, is to say goodbye to someone. Yi Jun's funeral was not for or about me, and almost everyone knew her longer than I did, but I never really got a chance to say goodbye since I was busy explaining everything to Didier. It was an honor to be in that position, and a highly educational experience, but I would have liked the luxury of mourning my friend with everyone else.
Huang Yi Jun was 34 years old.
Yi Jun and I met at a medical facility in April 2020. We were both trying to gain weight. My weight loss was from a TBI a few years earlier. Hers was from leukemia, though no one knew it at the time. She was tested for a wide variety of ailments, but apparently not the type of leukemia she had. Neither of us gained any weight at the camp, but we became friends.
Yi Jun was born and raised in Chiayi Hsien, Taiwan. She was always a good student and got into the best schools. She studied chemical engineering at National Taiwan University, which is generally considered the best school in Taiwan, according to people at National Taiwan University. After graduating, she moved to Michigan, started her career, got married, and had a daughter.
English was never her best subject, but she had a high enough ranking job, and more importantly, made enough money that she faced less discrimination than the average expat in the United States. Her American husband, on the other hand, often complained about her poor English. Naturally, he never bothered to learn Chinese. They also had the usual cultural issues. Americans often have problems with people from other states. Taiwan might as well be on a different planet. I never met her ex-husband, but from what she told me, he sounded like a typical xenophobe. Why he ever married a Taiwanese is anyone's guess. My assumption is that he thought she would be a passive and obedient wife, which is a bizarre stereotype in the United States that is as far removed from reality as their views on international relations and the shape of the Earth.
Four years after getting married, they were divorced. When Yi Jun decided to move back to Taiwan, there was a custody battle for their daughter. Since she wanted to take her child, who was born in the United States and far too young to make any decisions for herself, to one of them foreigner countries that don't speak no English, the court gave the father full custody.
Before fully putting her life back together, Yi Jun met a man from France. I would have advised against jumping in the pool so soon after almost drowning, but I did not know her at the time, so she moved to France and married Didier. Ironically, this husband got a job in Ohio. Yi Jun knew she could easily find a job in the United States with her chemical engineering background, and Ohio was much closer to her daughter than Taiwan or France, so she moved again. Fortunately, this husband was French, so their cultural differences were never seen as a negative.
When she started to get sick and lose weight, they spent a small fortune on doctors and tests. One doctor told her it was stress. Several treated her as if she had a learning disability because she was a foreigner who spoke English poorly, never mind that she was fluent in twice as many languages as they were. Every doctor who failed to diagnose her leukemia sent a bill and demanded to be paid in full. Eventually, Yi Jun and Didier went to Taiwan, where no one has to go bankrupt to get healthcare. Her doctor sent her to the Taipei weight camp, where we met.
A few days after getting a diagnosis, she started chemotherapy for the sole purpose of wiping out her immune system. Chemotherapy does little to nothing for leukemia, but they used it to prepare her body for the stem cell transplant. I was surprised by how quickly they found a bone marrow donor. Since the doctors never had to wait around for any insurance company approval, they moved quickly at every stage of her treatment. It was as if treating her was more important than filling out the right paperwork. When she went home from the hospital, everyone was optimistic. T-cell prolymphocytic leukemia has a ridiculously low survival rate, but there were no complications from the stem cell transplant. Everything was looking good.
Despite feeling terrible, Yi Jun was worried about looking terrible. She was always a pretty girl who looked younger than she really was. When I met her, I thought she was in her mid twenties. After chemo, she looked middle aged. We talked a lot about losing our hair. Mine had grown back and was getting longer every day by the time she lost hers. It is amazing how important hair is to young women. You expect men to go bald, but a woman without hair is a shock. Yi Jun and I both went from having long hair most of our lives to suddenly having nothing. She wore a wig pretty much all the time. I used to wear a lot of hats.
We talked about recovery. Mine was slow and painful, and she took comfort in the long, detailed stories that make most people's eyes glaze over. A craniotomy is absolutely nothing like cancer, but she liked the parts about overcoming the odds and getting myself back to full speed, or at least 90%. She was competitive enough to think that if I could do it, she could, too.
Yi Jun's sister told me over the phone that Yi Jun died. I would have preferred to hear that in person, but at least it was not a text message. I only knew her for 17 months, so I was probably pretty far down the list of people to call. All things considered, it was nice of her sister to let me know.
Yi Jun's husband was in Taiwan during the last round of treatment and was with her in the hospital when she died, luckily. He speaks no Chinese and her family speaks no French. At least the doctors could speak to him in English. But it was the family that planned the funeral, and none of them knew more than a few words or phrases in English. I was drafted as their translator.
Yi Jun and Didier lived in France and the United States. Yi Jun mostly lived away from Taiwan the last ten years of her life. But there was never any question among her family that her funeral would be in Taiwan and everything would be done the Taiwan way. This was news to Didier, but he was in no position to argue. He later told me that he would have preferred taking her back to France and doing everything the French way, but by then it was too late.
I have only lived in Taiwan for 16 months; less time than I knew Yi Jun. I am not the first person you go to for information or explanations about Taiwan funeral practices. In fact, Yi Jun's was my first Taiwan funeral. Yet I was supposed to tell Didier what was going on before it even happened. The first of many awkward situations was when I read her obituary to him. It was written by her family and pretty standard as far as obituaries go. It mentioned when and where she was born and when and how she died. It mentioned her parents more than you usually see in Western obituaries. It mentioned that she was survived by her husband, two sons, and daughter. This part was a little confusing. Yi Jun had a daughter with her first husband and no children with Didier. They were married less than three years when she got sick. Didier assumed I was translating the obituary incorrectly, but it very clearly said two sons and one daughter, and gave their names.
A quick phone call to her sister cleared everything up. I did not know her sister particularly well, but she was my liaison for all things funeral. It turns out, according to her sister, that Yi Jun married a Taiwanese at 18, had two sons, and was divorced by 21. Her American husband, who I thought was her first, was her second. They got married when Yi Jun was 24 and divorced at 28. Didier was her third husband. I have no idea why Yi Jun never told me about her Taiwanese husband, or her two sons, but we only knew each other for 17 months. I never knew her when she was healthy. Then again, she told me plenty about her American husband and daughter.
I was stunned by this new information, but I could see where maybe she did not go around telling everyone that she got married too young and it ended poorly. And maybe it was easy to talk to me about the American husband because I have some experience with failed American relationships. But the real shock was how shocked Didier was to learn about the Taiwanese husband and two sons. She never mentioned them to him either. He knew all about the American husband and daughter, including plenty of detailed stories Yi Jun never told me, but she never told her French husband that he was number three. Didier had a lot of questions, but I had none of the answers. He would have to talk to Yi Jun's sister, and that would require me translating. Somehow, I landed in the middle of a Taiwanese telenovela. We tried to set up a lunch before the funeral, but everyone was too busy. To date, this conversation has not happened. I think her family is avoiding Didier as politely as possible. They knew a Yi Jun that he never met.
Fortunately, the funeral was straightforward and pretty intuitive. The funeral home put the body in a casket, everyone came and sat in the audience, a few people gave speeches, including her oldest son – who was not at all a shock to most of the people in attendance, a small choir sang “Amazing Grace” and a few Taiwan folk songs, they showed a low quality video that looked like a 1980s VHS tape of people who could not be there in person giving their condolences, the family put flowers on Yi Jun's body, everyone else lined up to cover her with flowers, the funeral people dramatically carried the coffin into a waiting hearse with everyone following in a processional, and most of the guests went home. It was only after they took the body away that Taiwan custom started to diverge from what Didier and I consider routine.
None of Yi Jun's ex-husbands were at the funeral. Both of her teenage sons were there, but her daughter was not. Yi Jun and her daughter never had the best relationship, and as an American, the daughter would have been subject to some strict entry requirements had she tried to come to Taiwan. A few of Yi Jun's Ohio and Michigan friends and colleagues recorded messages for the low quality video, but her daughter was not among them.
Only the family followed the hearse away from the funeral. Since I was Didier's translator, I came along for the ride. Very few bodies are buried whole in Taiwan, so we did not go to a cemetery to inter the coffin. We went to the local crematorium. I had warned Didier about this ahead of time, and cremation is not so unusual in his country, but I could not warn him about how they would prepare the body because no one ever told me. When they asked him to help take Yi Jun out of the coffin and wash her body, we were both surprised. I had no idea this was part of Taiwanese culture. Most people around here never talk about funeral rites, until it is time to get down to business. I like to think I am pretty open minded when it comes to cultures different from my own, but I was more than a little uncomfortable watching Didier and a few female relatives wash the lifeless corpse of my friend. Didier was pretty much horrified, but he went along with it because it was expected of him, and he mostly walked around in a daze that day.
Mercifully, we did not have to personally set the body on fire. They put her in a cheaper coffin, since the one at the funeral was a ceremonial rental, and machines did most of the work. We were not even in the same building when they fired up the oven.
I had a chance to warn Didier about the next part, because I knew it was going to happen. Once cremated, the remains were brought out to the family, where they literally picked her bones. In Taiwan, just like China, and probably more than a few East Asian countries, the bones are not pulverized to a fine dust and placed in an urn. They are scattered on a large tray where immediate family can pick out the bone fragments they want to keep. Most of her relatives will bury their portion of Yi Jun in their local cemetery and visit her every year during 清明節 (Tomb Sweeping Day). Didier's plan is to take his Yi Jun bones back to France and bury her after a more familiar memorial service.
The point of a funeral, as far as I know, is to say goodbye to someone. Yi Jun's funeral was not for or about me, and almost everyone knew her longer than I did, but I never really got a chance to say goodbye since I was busy explaining everything to Didier. It was an honor to be in that position, and a highly educational experience, but I would have liked the luxury of mourning my friend with everyone else.
Huang Yi Jun was 34 years old.
Saturday, September 11, 2021
911
Twenty years ago, the United States changed, and not for the better. A small group of terrorists wanted to strike at the heart of America's financial power. They did little damage to corporate America and had no effect on corporate greed and domination. If anything, they helped make it easier for the unscrupulous to manipulate the gullible. But those terrorists were highly successful at making the people even more hateful and paranoid than before.
When I was a child, an Egyptian family moved into the neighborhood. This was a big event because, from my point of view, they had children my age. The adults probably noticed that this new family was not white. Racism was popular long before 9/11, but no one in our neighborhood seemed to care that this family was Muslim. Most of the talk was about pyramids and mummies. Some of us were baffled that the new family's children had never seen pyramids in person. That was like being from France and never seeing the Eiffel Tower, though it is pretty hard to spot from Nice. I never heard anyone use the word terrorist.
That would play out very differently today.
I can remember a time when Americans of different political persuasions could talk to each other in a civil manner. Believe it or not, there was even a time when people acknowledged that more than two political parties existed. In 1992, Ross Perot had a significant impact on the election. He was neither Republican nor Democrat.
Today, there might as well be only two parties, the Capulets and Montagues. They are not rivals for the same throne. They are sworn enemies. Where it used to be Americans who saw things one way versus Americans who saw things another way, today it is patriots versus traitors; real Americans versus unAmericans. The end of the Cold War played an enormous part in the country's internal division. With no common enemy to unite against, the house was free to divide against itself. Saudis flying planes into buildings did not cause any of that, but it certainly did not help.
Wednesday, September 1, 2021
Naked Day 2021 part 3
The Islands
Sofia's favorite beach was everything she had described, though larger than I expected. She kept telling us that it was tiny. I thought it would be maybe a dozen meters wide instead of half a kilometer. The sand was as white and soft as Sofia remembered, and we were the only humans on the island. We sailed past the pier on the way to the cove and it looked like it had not been touched in months, which made sense. The pier is only used by people visiting the island to watch dolphins migrate. Since the dolphins are getting closer to extinction every year and avoid Hong Kong during the crowded boat traffic of summer, the island gets fewer visitors than ever.
The purpose of a beach, to me, is a means to reach and/or look at the ocean. With the boat, I did not particularly need the beach. My skin goes straight from pale to burned. Getting a tan is never on my agenda. And if I wanted to burn, there was plenty of sunlight hitting the boat. But Sofia is a beach person. She knows where all the best beaches are in Hong Kong. That might sound like a wasted talent, like knowing which heavy metal singer has the sweetest voice, but knowing someone who knows where the beaches are can save a lot of time in a place like Hong Kong. Assuming you like beaches.
Swimming from a boat in a shallow cove to a beach is easier than hiking through the brush of a volcanic island, but we found our own obstacles. Beach towels tend to get wet when you swim to the beach, so we carried ours in waterproof bags. Amy could not carry a bag because she is a weak swimmer. Growing up in Hong Kong, swimming was never a priority, and she was in a serious car accident four years ago that permanently damaged one of her arms. She can keep afloat and move around, but she had to doggy paddle to the beach while I played lifeguard. We were both largely indifferent to spending time on the beach, but Sofia was going no matter what. We went to keep her company, and that meant bringing towels and drinks.
The beach was our primary destination, but we spent more time on the boat than anywhere else. We sailed around some of the smaller islands that were little more than large rocks in the water, which was more interesting the more I thought about it. Hong Kong is generally seen as a steel and concrete jungle, and even when you live there, it looks that way most of the time. But most of Hong Kong is country parks and uninhabited islands.
The most interesting stop of the day was easily Tai A Chau, the largest of the Soko Islands. Though just as deserted as all the others, it has remnants of previous inhabitants. We docked at a run down and weed infested but large and well built landing. Unlike the other islands, there were roads and paths to walk, even if they had seen better days. The villages on Tai A Chau were abandoned 40 years ago, and there was a refugee camp 15 years later. The buildings are mostly gone, but you can tell someone lived there at some point in time. It was like a smaller version of Yim Tin Tsai in Sai Kung, which has an abandoned village of houses full of furniture, clothes, and a variety of personal possessions. You can walk around as if everyone disappeared in a Twilight Zone episode.
Walking around Tai A Chau was far less creepy than Yim Tin Tsai, but it felt more dangerous. We probably should have put clothes on, but this was Sofia's naked day. Officially, I will say it was all her doing, but I did not object nearly as much as I would have expected. The island was conspicuously bereft of mammals.
I should probably point out that such a thing is completely illegal in China. I can recommend walking around naked in your living room, but doing so in public can become a jagged little pill if you get caught. And I can almost guarantee that no judge in Hong Kong will accept “but Hailey did it” as an excuse.
The newest structure on the island was the tiny Mazu temple, no bigger than a backyard tool shed, though not the smallest temple I have ever seen. It was originally built 200 years ago, but rebuilt 20 years ago. The bright new brick walls looked out of place on an island where nature reclaimed everything else. Walking into the temple naked was far and away the most inappropriate thing we did that day. But it felt less sacrilegious than it sounds because Mazu is essentially a Mother Nature goddess. Who better to appreciate our natural state? And the rebuild made it look almost fake. In my experience, most temples look much older.
With only 13 hours of sunlight in the day, we decided to head back after Tai A Chau. You can legally drive a boat at night, and Hu Jian was certainly qualified, but we did not rent it for the full 24 hours. We took the same route back, at an equally leisurely pace. The boat was comfortable enough to lie around and watch all the islands drift by, with large cushions near the bow and a soft sofa at the stern. Most of the people who rent the boat probably use it for fishing, which might be one of the reasons it is furnished for sitting around all day.
Past Lamma Island, we all got dressed again. Everyone in our group, especially Hu Jian, followed Sofia's lead when it came to nudist etiquette. He was the boat expert and she knew all about the dress codes. Amy and I went along for the ride. We were the experts at eating and drinking on our day off.
The purpose of a beach, to me, is a means to reach and/or look at the ocean. With the boat, I did not particularly need the beach. My skin goes straight from pale to burned. Getting a tan is never on my agenda. And if I wanted to burn, there was plenty of sunlight hitting the boat. But Sofia is a beach person. She knows where all the best beaches are in Hong Kong. That might sound like a wasted talent, like knowing which heavy metal singer has the sweetest voice, but knowing someone who knows where the beaches are can save a lot of time in a place like Hong Kong. Assuming you like beaches.
Swimming from a boat in a shallow cove to a beach is easier than hiking through the brush of a volcanic island, but we found our own obstacles. Beach towels tend to get wet when you swim to the beach, so we carried ours in waterproof bags. Amy could not carry a bag because she is a weak swimmer. Growing up in Hong Kong, swimming was never a priority, and she was in a serious car accident four years ago that permanently damaged one of her arms. She can keep afloat and move around, but she had to doggy paddle to the beach while I played lifeguard. We were both largely indifferent to spending time on the beach, but Sofia was going no matter what. We went to keep her company, and that meant bringing towels and drinks.
The beach was our primary destination, but we spent more time on the boat than anywhere else. We sailed around some of the smaller islands that were little more than large rocks in the water, which was more interesting the more I thought about it. Hong Kong is generally seen as a steel and concrete jungle, and even when you live there, it looks that way most of the time. But most of Hong Kong is country parks and uninhabited islands.
The most interesting stop of the day was easily Tai A Chau, the largest of the Soko Islands. Though just as deserted as all the others, it has remnants of previous inhabitants. We docked at a run down and weed infested but large and well built landing. Unlike the other islands, there were roads and paths to walk, even if they had seen better days. The villages on Tai A Chau were abandoned 40 years ago, and there was a refugee camp 15 years later. The buildings are mostly gone, but you can tell someone lived there at some point in time. It was like a smaller version of Yim Tin Tsai in Sai Kung, which has an abandoned village of houses full of furniture, clothes, and a variety of personal possessions. You can walk around as if everyone disappeared in a Twilight Zone episode.
Walking around Tai A Chau was far less creepy than Yim Tin Tsai, but it felt more dangerous. We probably should have put clothes on, but this was Sofia's naked day. Officially, I will say it was all her doing, but I did not object nearly as much as I would have expected. The island was conspicuously bereft of mammals.
I should probably point out that such a thing is completely illegal in China. I can recommend walking around naked in your living room, but doing so in public can become a jagged little pill if you get caught. And I can almost guarantee that no judge in Hong Kong will accept “but Hailey did it” as an excuse.
The newest structure on the island was the tiny Mazu temple, no bigger than a backyard tool shed, though not the smallest temple I have ever seen. It was originally built 200 years ago, but rebuilt 20 years ago. The bright new brick walls looked out of place on an island where nature reclaimed everything else. Walking into the temple naked was far and away the most inappropriate thing we did that day. But it felt less sacrilegious than it sounds because Mazu is essentially a Mother Nature goddess. Who better to appreciate our natural state? And the rebuild made it look almost fake. In my experience, most temples look much older.
With only 13 hours of sunlight in the day, we decided to head back after Tai A Chau. You can legally drive a boat at night, and Hu Jian was certainly qualified, but we did not rent it for the full 24 hours. We took the same route back, at an equally leisurely pace. The boat was comfortable enough to lie around and watch all the islands drift by, with large cushions near the bow and a soft sofa at the stern. Most of the people who rent the boat probably use it for fishing, which might be one of the reasons it is furnished for sitting around all day.
Past Lamma Island, we all got dressed again. Everyone in our group, especially Hu Jian, followed Sofia's lead when it came to nudist etiquette. He was the boat expert and she knew all about the dress codes. Amy and I went along for the ride. We were the experts at eating and drinking on our day off.
Tuesday, August 24, 2021
Naked Day 2021 part 2
The People
I have friends in Hong Kong. That is the sort of thing that happens when you live there. One of them is a card-carrying member of the Hong Kong Boating Industry Association. He does not actually own a boat, but he is saving up to buy one. Ask him and he will tell you all about it. Parents have pictures of their children on their phones. Pet owners have videos of their cats knocking things off tables. He has pictures of the boat he wants to buy. It is nice, as boats go.
His girlfriend is a card-carrying member of the American Association for Nude Recreation. She literally has a membership card. She is from Canada, where I would not expect a great deal of recreational outdoor nudity most of the year, but she lives in Hong Kong, where there is even less.
They wanted to rent a boat and find a secluded island for their own naked day. They also wanted some people to join them because renting a decent boat is far from cheap. Lily, Kevin, and I were in. Hong Kong has some beautiful islands, and it always intrigues me how you can live in the city for years and never see most of them. Lily and I recruited Amy, the best massage therapist in all of China, as far as I know. We have all known each other for years.
Lily and Kevin met each other in Canada, long before any of us and long before I ever thought about living in Hong Kong. I met Lily and then Kevin more than ten years ago. I met Amy when she started giving me leg massages nine years ago. We started out professionally, but quickly became friends. I met Sofia about six years ago, immediately after which Sofia and Hu Jian met each other on their own. And since it is a small world after all, and Hong Kong is even smaller, Amy and Hu Jian discovered that their brothers went to school together, though they never crossed paths at the time. Their full biographies are not particularly important. What matters is that we have all been friends long enough that the initial idea of a naked boat day did not repel me. Though I always knew there was a 50/50 chance that it would turn into a regular, clothed boat day.
Lily and Kevin dropped out before anyone paid for the boat. They offered to pay their share anyway since it was a last minute cancellation, but that was completely unnecessary. Though we are all on our summer vacations, Kevin also had work to do. And I think he and Lily were looking forward to their own naked day at the big house, as long as I was out to sea.
That left four people on a boat designed to hold six to eight. I think more space is always a good idea whenever people are on a boat, especially if everyone is naked. We were never going to spend the night, so we never needed to adapt to close quarters. I was in it for the wide open islands anyway.
Hu Jian took care of all the boat logistics. He was the boat person in our group and this trip was his idea. Amy and I met at her house and went down to Kwun Tong together, where Sofia, Hu Jian, and the boat were waiting. The boat was moored in the middle of the water with a bunch of other boats, so we took a smaller boat taxi out to our boat. Hong Kong does not have nearly enough spaces to park all the boats, forcing most of them to park in the water without any kind of dock. That is the main reason Hong Kong has so many typhoon shelters.
From Kwun Tong, we sailed out of Kowloon Bay, into the South China Sea, around Hong Kong Island, and headed west. On a map, it makes more sense to go west through Victoria Harbour and then southwest between Hong Kong Island and Lantau, but that area holds something like 90% of all the boat traffic in Hong Kong. The way we went was faster, required less paperwork, and was more scenic. I suppose if you have never been to Hong Kong, sailing from Kowloon Bay through Victoria Harbour would be the bees knees, but anyone who has lived in Hong Kong for more than a month has seen Victoria Harbour from every angle. The islands south of Hong Kong Island are less frequently explored by pretty much everyone.
Our destination was the Soko Islands, less than 35km southwest of Kowloon Bay. I have no idea how many nautical miles that is. It took us about two hours, but we made a few stops and were in no hurry to get there.
Hu Jian chose the Soko Islands for a few reasons. The islands are easy to get to from Kowloon or Hong Kong Island, and even easier from Lantau, assuming you have your own boat. There are no ferries because they are completely uninhabited. North of Lantau is a rather large airport, freeways, and a lot of commercial and private boats going all over the place. South of Lantau is pretty much nothing but wild islands that most people never visit. One of the islands also has Sofia's favorite beach in Hong Kong. It is not especially large, but the sand is soft and white, and the beach is probably always deserted. There is a tiny pier on the island where we could have parked the boat, but getting to the beach from the pier requires a bit of a hike, and there are no trails. It was much easier to park the boat in the cove and swim to the beach.
Hu Jian was the only one wearing clothes by the time we arrived at the Soko Islands. He claimed to be busy driving the boat, but he was clearly the shy one in our group. At Kowloon Bay, we were all fully clothed. Technically, it is illegal to be nude in any public space in Hong Kong. Inside the cabin of a boat is considered private, while out on the deck is public, even on a large body of water with no other people visible to the naked eye. Go nude on the deck of a boat in the middle of Kowloon Bay and you might get a visit from men in uniforms. Go nude south of Lamma Island and no one will ever know or care. Supposedly, Lamma Island has an unofficial nude beach, but I would think it is too populated. Then again, I know Lantau has a nude beach, and it has 15 times as many people.
Amy and I wore bathing suits at the beginning of our boat trip, but Sofia, as the official nudist, shed her clothes as soon as we were clear of the shipping lanes from Stanley. We parked the boat at a little cove on the southern end of Lamma Island. Our goal was to go swimming and maybe explore the island a little. In the clean water between the island and the boat, Amy and I realized that our bathing suits were unnecessary. Though a few thousand people live on Lamma, they all live on the northern half of the island. While Amy, Sofia, and I floated and Hu Jian manned the boat, we pretty much abandoned the idea of exploring inland. The choice between air drying on the boat deck and putting all of our clothes back on to hike toward civilization and overpriced tourist trinkets in the oppressive humidity was an easy one. Lamma Island is a bit of a haven for artists, expats, and alternative types, but even on the most hippie island in Hong Kong, wearing clothes would have been required. Sofia had the right idea, so we carried on to the Soko Islands.
His girlfriend is a card-carrying member of the American Association for Nude Recreation. She literally has a membership card. She is from Canada, where I would not expect a great deal of recreational outdoor nudity most of the year, but she lives in Hong Kong, where there is even less.
They wanted to rent a boat and find a secluded island for their own naked day. They also wanted some people to join them because renting a decent boat is far from cheap. Lily, Kevin, and I were in. Hong Kong has some beautiful islands, and it always intrigues me how you can live in the city for years and never see most of them. Lily and I recruited Amy, the best massage therapist in all of China, as far as I know. We have all known each other for years.
Lily and Kevin met each other in Canada, long before any of us and long before I ever thought about living in Hong Kong. I met Lily and then Kevin more than ten years ago. I met Amy when she started giving me leg massages nine years ago. We started out professionally, but quickly became friends. I met Sofia about six years ago, immediately after which Sofia and Hu Jian met each other on their own. And since it is a small world after all, and Hong Kong is even smaller, Amy and Hu Jian discovered that their brothers went to school together, though they never crossed paths at the time. Their full biographies are not particularly important. What matters is that we have all been friends long enough that the initial idea of a naked boat day did not repel me. Though I always knew there was a 50/50 chance that it would turn into a regular, clothed boat day.
Lily and Kevin dropped out before anyone paid for the boat. They offered to pay their share anyway since it was a last minute cancellation, but that was completely unnecessary. Though we are all on our summer vacations, Kevin also had work to do. And I think he and Lily were looking forward to their own naked day at the big house, as long as I was out to sea.
That left four people on a boat designed to hold six to eight. I think more space is always a good idea whenever people are on a boat, especially if everyone is naked. We were never going to spend the night, so we never needed to adapt to close quarters. I was in it for the wide open islands anyway.
Hu Jian took care of all the boat logistics. He was the boat person in our group and this trip was his idea. Amy and I met at her house and went down to Kwun Tong together, where Sofia, Hu Jian, and the boat were waiting. The boat was moored in the middle of the water with a bunch of other boats, so we took a smaller boat taxi out to our boat. Hong Kong does not have nearly enough spaces to park all the boats, forcing most of them to park in the water without any kind of dock. That is the main reason Hong Kong has so many typhoon shelters.
From Kwun Tong, we sailed out of Kowloon Bay, into the South China Sea, around Hong Kong Island, and headed west. On a map, it makes more sense to go west through Victoria Harbour and then southwest between Hong Kong Island and Lantau, but that area holds something like 90% of all the boat traffic in Hong Kong. The way we went was faster, required less paperwork, and was more scenic. I suppose if you have never been to Hong Kong, sailing from Kowloon Bay through Victoria Harbour would be the bees knees, but anyone who has lived in Hong Kong for more than a month has seen Victoria Harbour from every angle. The islands south of Hong Kong Island are less frequently explored by pretty much everyone.
Our destination was the Soko Islands, less than 35km southwest of Kowloon Bay. I have no idea how many nautical miles that is. It took us about two hours, but we made a few stops and were in no hurry to get there.
Hu Jian chose the Soko Islands for a few reasons. The islands are easy to get to from Kowloon or Hong Kong Island, and even easier from Lantau, assuming you have your own boat. There are no ferries because they are completely uninhabited. North of Lantau is a rather large airport, freeways, and a lot of commercial and private boats going all over the place. South of Lantau is pretty much nothing but wild islands that most people never visit. One of the islands also has Sofia's favorite beach in Hong Kong. It is not especially large, but the sand is soft and white, and the beach is probably always deserted. There is a tiny pier on the island where we could have parked the boat, but getting to the beach from the pier requires a bit of a hike, and there are no trails. It was much easier to park the boat in the cove and swim to the beach.
Hu Jian was the only one wearing clothes by the time we arrived at the Soko Islands. He claimed to be busy driving the boat, but he was clearly the shy one in our group. At Kowloon Bay, we were all fully clothed. Technically, it is illegal to be nude in any public space in Hong Kong. Inside the cabin of a boat is considered private, while out on the deck is public, even on a large body of water with no other people visible to the naked eye. Go nude on the deck of a boat in the middle of Kowloon Bay and you might get a visit from men in uniforms. Go nude south of Lamma Island and no one will ever know or care. Supposedly, Lamma Island has an unofficial nude beach, but I would think it is too populated. Then again, I know Lantau has a nude beach, and it has 15 times as many people.
Amy and I wore bathing suits at the beginning of our boat trip, but Sofia, as the official nudist, shed her clothes as soon as we were clear of the shipping lanes from Stanley. We parked the boat at a little cove on the southern end of Lamma Island. Our goal was to go swimming and maybe explore the island a little. In the clean water between the island and the boat, Amy and I realized that our bathing suits were unnecessary. Though a few thousand people live on Lamma, they all live on the northern half of the island. While Amy, Sofia, and I floated and Hu Jian manned the boat, we pretty much abandoned the idea of exploring inland. The choice between air drying on the boat deck and putting all of our clothes back on to hike toward civilization and overpriced tourist trinkets in the oppressive humidity was an easy one. Lamma Island is a bit of a haven for artists, expats, and alternative types, but even on the most hippie island in Hong Kong, wearing clothes would have been required. Sofia had the right idea, so we carried on to the Soko Islands.
Friday, August 6, 2021
Naked Day 2021 part 1
The Swimming
Have you ever walked around an abandoned Chinese fishing village naked? I suppose I can add that to the list of thing I never even thought about doing until it actually happened.
I have what is probably a not at all unique relationship with nudity. I am comfortable naked. I love being naked outdoors; the more natural the environment, the better. But I do not like to be naked around other people, unless I know them exceptionally well. I am perfectly comfortable with my body. As a dancer, I know it very well. We have been good friends for a long time. I am 30 years old, but could easily pass for 29. I run or bicycle every morning. I go to the gym most nights. Now that I do more choreography than performing, I dance less at work than I used to, and not at all during dress rehearsals and performances, but my typical work day involves far more physical activity than the typical office job. I like to think I am in decent shape. But I do not particularly like being watched.
I have been on stage since childhood, in one capacity or another. But never naked. I feel completely comfortable in front of an audience, and love getting applause. It is addictive. I have absolutely no problem being watched while performing. Performing without an audience is like potatoes without salt. At the same time, I feel nothing but uncomfortable being stared at off the clock.
I grew up around lakes. I come from the Land of 10,000 Lakes. It was not nearly as rural as Little House On the Prairie, but we used to go swimming in one lake or another every summer. Clothing was not always required, when we were too young to know what an abomination our sinful bodies were. Outside of lakes, there were rivers and swimming pools. My family never had a pool in the backyard, but I always knew someone who did. As a child, my best friends had the best pools in the neighborhood. I like to hope that was a coincidence. I spent a healthy percent of my childhood under water. One of my goals in life was always to own a house with a swimming pool. I now own a third of three apartments, all of which have pools on the estate. I don't live in any of them.
Finding a clean swimming pool in Hong Kong is difficult. There are plenty of public pools. None of them are free, as far as I know. All of them have the potential to be toilets. Literally. Seeing what the general public does in Chinese public pools has left me scarred for life. Maybe I am being too hard on them, and it most likely does not happen every day, but more than once is too much.
The big house at Clear Water Bay has a swimming pool. It is professionally cleaned on a regular basis. Most importantly, it is private. At most, I have to share it with two other people, both of whom I know exceptionally well. To me, the best reason to stay at that house is to use the swimming pool. Also to me, swimming with clothes on is ridiculous. If I have access to a clean pool, I am swimming. If it is private, I am swimming naked.
This summer was our tenth anniversary of staying at the Clear Water Bay house. It is also the tenth anniversary of my first visit to a nude beach, though that was in December. Despite living in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, I never went to any nude beaches there. My first nude beach was in Hong Kong, Land of 10,000 Islands. It was a nice little beach on the southern end of Lantau. Like most beaches in Hong Kong, it is almost always deserted. Especially in December.
I like to have at least one naked day whenever I stay at the big house. When we all lived in Hong Kong, it was pretty easy to have a day to myself at the house. We all have different schedules, and never spend every waking minute together, in Hong Kong or Taiwan.
I cannot rationally explain why I always want a naked day at the big house. Obviously, swimming naked is the way to go, and the sun and relatively fresh air on the pool deck feel good against bare skin. A light rain can be nice, too. But inside the house, there really is no difference between clothed and nude. The entire house is climate controlled, there is nothing dangerous about it in that secluded neighborhood, and since I am alone, there are no adult-rated shenanigans afoot. At this point, it might just be more traditional than anything else.
Except this year's naked day at the big house did not happen at the house, or anywhere near Clear Water Bay.
I have what is probably a not at all unique relationship with nudity. I am comfortable naked. I love being naked outdoors; the more natural the environment, the better. But I do not like to be naked around other people, unless I know them exceptionally well. I am perfectly comfortable with my body. As a dancer, I know it very well. We have been good friends for a long time. I am 30 years old, but could easily pass for 29. I run or bicycle every morning. I go to the gym most nights. Now that I do more choreography than performing, I dance less at work than I used to, and not at all during dress rehearsals and performances, but my typical work day involves far more physical activity than the typical office job. I like to think I am in decent shape. But I do not particularly like being watched.
I have been on stage since childhood, in one capacity or another. But never naked. I feel completely comfortable in front of an audience, and love getting applause. It is addictive. I have absolutely no problem being watched while performing. Performing without an audience is like potatoes without salt. At the same time, I feel nothing but uncomfortable being stared at off the clock.
I grew up around lakes. I come from the Land of 10,000 Lakes. It was not nearly as rural as Little House On the Prairie, but we used to go swimming in one lake or another every summer. Clothing was not always required, when we were too young to know what an abomination our sinful bodies were. Outside of lakes, there were rivers and swimming pools. My family never had a pool in the backyard, but I always knew someone who did. As a child, my best friends had the best pools in the neighborhood. I like to hope that was a coincidence. I spent a healthy percent of my childhood under water. One of my goals in life was always to own a house with a swimming pool. I now own a third of three apartments, all of which have pools on the estate. I don't live in any of them.
Finding a clean swimming pool in Hong Kong is difficult. There are plenty of public pools. None of them are free, as far as I know. All of them have the potential to be toilets. Literally. Seeing what the general public does in Chinese public pools has left me scarred for life. Maybe I am being too hard on them, and it most likely does not happen every day, but more than once is too much.
The big house at Clear Water Bay has a swimming pool. It is professionally cleaned on a regular basis. Most importantly, it is private. At most, I have to share it with two other people, both of whom I know exceptionally well. To me, the best reason to stay at that house is to use the swimming pool. Also to me, swimming with clothes on is ridiculous. If I have access to a clean pool, I am swimming. If it is private, I am swimming naked.
This summer was our tenth anniversary of staying at the Clear Water Bay house. It is also the tenth anniversary of my first visit to a nude beach, though that was in December. Despite living in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, I never went to any nude beaches there. My first nude beach was in Hong Kong, Land of 10,000 Islands. It was a nice little beach on the southern end of Lantau. Like most beaches in Hong Kong, it is almost always deserted. Especially in December.
I like to have at least one naked day whenever I stay at the big house. When we all lived in Hong Kong, it was pretty easy to have a day to myself at the house. We all have different schedules, and never spend every waking minute together, in Hong Kong or Taiwan.
I cannot rationally explain why I always want a naked day at the big house. Obviously, swimming naked is the way to go, and the sun and relatively fresh air on the pool deck feel good against bare skin. A light rain can be nice, too. But inside the house, there really is no difference between clothed and nude. The entire house is climate controlled, there is nothing dangerous about it in that secluded neighborhood, and since I am alone, there are no adult-rated shenanigans afoot. At this point, it might just be more traditional than anything else.
Except this year's naked day at the big house did not happen at the house, or anywhere near Clear Water Bay.
Friday, July 30, 2021
The Wettest Drought in 50 Years
Way back in May, before the rainy season started, Taiwan was struggling with its most severe drought in 50 years. The government was thinking out loud about ways to ration water. It looked like we might have to live without indoor plumbing one day each week. That would have been inconvenient. When the drought kept droughting, they started talking about two days a week without water. That sounded entirely unacceptable. Having no water does not mean no water in the bathroom only. It would have also meant no doing laundry or washing dishes. I suppose we could have used bottled water, but that would get expensive pretty fast. Outside of the home, they were going to close all the car washes. Bathing your car is not as important as bathing your body, but my car is new. The idea of not washing it felt wrong. Maybe in ten years we can let ourselves go, but we are still newlyweds.
Then the rainy season started. The drought was washed away, almost overnight. It rained enough to fill the lakes and reservoirs. And it kept raining. It rained enough to flood the lower level streets. Why there is not a better drainage system in a hilly city with annual tropical rain, I have no idea. We are on the coast. Piping rain water into the ocean should be easy. I am lucky enough to live by the river. When it rains for a month or two, all that water flows into the river. Some people live at the bottom of hills. Water tends not to go uphill.
We moved to Taiwan just before the start of the rainy season last year. It looks like it might be raining more this year, but that might only be because of the drought. There could be the same amount of rain as last year, or less, for all I know. The biggest difference for me is that I drive to work. Last year, I took the MRT to work at the beginning of the rainy season. I like rain, and recognize the good it does, especially after a drought. But taking the MRT to work during a monsoon is not ideal. I had to walk in the rain to the station, walk down the wet steps to get into the station, walk up the wet steps to get out of a different station, and walk to my building. I don't know what it is or why, but pretty much every stairway in Taiwan is wrong. They are either too narrow, too crooked, too small or too loose. Getting them wet is not an improvement. The only good thing about all the defective stairs in Taiwan is that I have ample experience with all the defective stairs in China. This is all probably a first world complaint, but falling down stairs, wet or dry, could be hazardous to my career.
Driving to work in the rain is much easier. I get into my car in my apartment building's underground parking and get out in my work's underground parking. My shoes never have to touch wet ground. In fact, I can wear whatever shoes I want, rather than my weatherproof Timberland boots. Driving in heavy rain is more dangerous than walking to the MRT station, but driving in Taiwan is inherently dangerous, regardless of weather conditions.
During the drought, my swimming pool with a gym opened a new gym with a swimming pool. But the pool was closed because of the drought. Once the drought ended, they opened the pool. But it is an outdoor pool, so they immediately closed it due to heavy rain. In July, the sun started to come out. And I say it's all right. It is still the rainy season. Blue skies can turn gray faster than the south seceded. White clouds can turn black faster than Al Jolson. But we have had a few hours here and there without rain.
My problems quickly turned from meteorological to logistical. My preference is to swim at the gym in the morning and exercise later at night. When the swimming pool was closed for the drought, I mostly rode a bicycle or ran in the morning, on the rare mornings it was not raining too heavily. When it rains, I can always ride a fake bike and run on a treadmill at the gym. But I still could not swim. When it stopped raining as much, I thought that would solve everything. But when they opened the swimming pool after the drought, they decided it should only be open from 09:00 to 18:00. That does not work for me at all. My morning ride/run/swim is usually around 05:00. I think the pool should be open whenever the gym is. They disagree. Somehow, I went from a swimming pool with a tiny gym that I never used to a gym with a pool I will rarely use.
It is supposed to rain tomorrow, so I doubt I will do anything outdoors. But at least the worst drought was one of the shortest.
Then the rainy season started. The drought was washed away, almost overnight. It rained enough to fill the lakes and reservoirs. And it kept raining. It rained enough to flood the lower level streets. Why there is not a better drainage system in a hilly city with annual tropical rain, I have no idea. We are on the coast. Piping rain water into the ocean should be easy. I am lucky enough to live by the river. When it rains for a month or two, all that water flows into the river. Some people live at the bottom of hills. Water tends not to go uphill.
We moved to Taiwan just before the start of the rainy season last year. It looks like it might be raining more this year, but that might only be because of the drought. There could be the same amount of rain as last year, or less, for all I know. The biggest difference for me is that I drive to work. Last year, I took the MRT to work at the beginning of the rainy season. I like rain, and recognize the good it does, especially after a drought. But taking the MRT to work during a monsoon is not ideal. I had to walk in the rain to the station, walk down the wet steps to get into the station, walk up the wet steps to get out of a different station, and walk to my building. I don't know what it is or why, but pretty much every stairway in Taiwan is wrong. They are either too narrow, too crooked, too small or too loose. Getting them wet is not an improvement. The only good thing about all the defective stairs in Taiwan is that I have ample experience with all the defective stairs in China. This is all probably a first world complaint, but falling down stairs, wet or dry, could be hazardous to my career.
Driving to work in the rain is much easier. I get into my car in my apartment building's underground parking and get out in my work's underground parking. My shoes never have to touch wet ground. In fact, I can wear whatever shoes I want, rather than my weatherproof Timberland boots. Driving in heavy rain is more dangerous than walking to the MRT station, but driving in Taiwan is inherently dangerous, regardless of weather conditions.
During the drought, my swimming pool with a gym opened a new gym with a swimming pool. But the pool was closed because of the drought. Once the drought ended, they opened the pool. But it is an outdoor pool, so they immediately closed it due to heavy rain. In July, the sun started to come out. And I say it's all right. It is still the rainy season. Blue skies can turn gray faster than the south seceded. White clouds can turn black faster than Al Jolson. But we have had a few hours here and there without rain.
My problems quickly turned from meteorological to logistical. My preference is to swim at the gym in the morning and exercise later at night. When the swimming pool was closed for the drought, I mostly rode a bicycle or ran in the morning, on the rare mornings it was not raining too heavily. When it rains, I can always ride a fake bike and run on a treadmill at the gym. But I still could not swim. When it stopped raining as much, I thought that would solve everything. But when they opened the swimming pool after the drought, they decided it should only be open from 09:00 to 18:00. That does not work for me at all. My morning ride/run/swim is usually around 05:00. I think the pool should be open whenever the gym is. They disagree. Somehow, I went from a swimming pool with a tiny gym that I never used to a gym with a pool I will rarely use.
It is supposed to rain tomorrow, so I doubt I will do anything outdoors. But at least the worst drought was one of the shortest.
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