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.