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Published: October 7th 2007
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Depending on how you say, “go le go le” it can mean anything from “no thanks I’m full” to “drop the subject NOW!” I was surely saying, “go le go le” a lot during New Years Eve dinner. A fellow could get used to the lifestyle over here. What a feast we had! We started with a whole fish each (sort of like a herring but the fish are different here), followed by four kinds of chicken. There was the usual kind of delicious cold chicken, followed by drunk chicken (marinated in rice wine and served cold), chicken feet (not my favourite), and chicken balls made from ground chicken and potato and cheese. We had several kinds of vegetables, including a mixture of different kinds of mushrooms, and servings of western-style broccoli and carrots. There were several noodle dishes and seaweed, along with lashings of Japanese and French wine. Everything was so good that I ushered in the Year of the Pig with a vengeance.
It is bad luck to see people in their bedrooms at New Year, so one of the domestic workers cruised out the old grandmother in her wheelchair to say hello. That reminds me of several
Then Along Came "Elvis"!
50 cc of fun and freedom. Chinese ideas about the New Year that Lao-puo learned in class. It will be good luck for us in the Year of the Pig, because we heard songbirds on New Year Day. You aren’t supposed to get angry on New Year Day, or do housework. When you clean up the day before, you must not take the garbage out the front door—sweep it into the corner instead. (I do that anyway). The idea is that you don’t want to sweep away your good luck. We put up our new Door Gods that I bought in the market (to my amusement, some Chinese Christians put up pictures of Chinese-style angels instead of Gods). People have a little ceremony to welcome the Gods back into their homes—the firecrackers drive off all the Gods and demons. I suppose that (being Christians) we ought not to invite the Chinese Gods back, but to my mind it never hurts to be neighbourly.
We didn’t get to the nuns’ place for New Year dinner, because all the fellows from Agape House went home for the season and their restaurant was going to be busy. Neither of us ended up doing a hand’s turn, which was
The Next Thing You Know...
They could have used Jane Fonda instead of Peter Fonda in "Easy Rider". a pity because I was looking forward to dusting off my forty-year old food service worker skills. We went for a walk before the dinner rush—in other words Lao-puo looked at clothing and I stood back patiently like St. Stephen the Martyr. She is actually very considerate about that sort of thing. I digress. She was bitten by a dog in our travels—a serious issue because you never know what hitchhikers might lurk in canine saliva. The dog’s owner had a little hole-in-the-wall clothing display, and the dog bit when Lao-puo misread his warning to get out of his turf. It was easy enough to do, the dog just walked up and stared at her. Fortunately for Lao-puo but tough beans for the tacker, she fell on a little boy when she tripped backing away from the dog. We were just a block from Hualien Hospital. NTD 990 (about $38), and twenty minutes later she was on her way again with a tetanus shot, antibiotic and analgesic medication, a bandaged up left hand, and a long-suffering look on her face because of my commenting on her new similarity to Michael Jackson because of the white glove the nurse put on
This Wonderful Lotus Blossom...
...is on the bridge to a temple in Taroko Gorge her hand.
It would have cost a lot less for the treatment (90% less) but spouses aren’t eligible for National Health Insurance for four months.
Lao-puo is a good driver. So good in fact that I sometimes call her “Susie Teamster”, but so far the concept has only been applicable to four-wheeled vehicles. It’s coming up time for her drive her scooter on her own, and she is determined to deal with Hualien’s very intimidating traffic. There is no public transportation, taxis add up like crazy, and Lao-puo being Lao-puo she doesn’t want to have to depend on me to take her around on Esmerelda. So. Off we went on our two machines. We stopped at a red light, and she asked where we were going next. She balked when I said “Jung Shan Lu” so in a show of empathy I sped off without a word and she had to follow me when the light turned green. Jung Shan is only one lane each way for the first few blocks, and the fact that the cars are bumper-to-bumper means that the motorbikes go in single file down the right. Sometimes, from obliviousness or malice, the car drivers move over to crowd the bikes—thereby adding to the mix of car doors, and bicycles, and scooters whipping in from the side streets without stopping or looking, and pedestrians, and dowagers in electric scooters, and guys deciding to double park.
On the whole, drivers are a lot more patient with each other over here—I guess because sometimes there is no alternative but to block traffic for a sec.
The next day Lao-puo passed the true test, the infamous Jung Jeng Lu. I’ll never complain about Yates and Douglas again. In fact, I might get a t-shirt made up that says “I turned left from Jung Jeng on to Jung Shan—and lived.”
Just as we got to the corner, we heard the crunch of metal on plastic, and saw a motorbike tipped over on its side and a young woman with a broken leg sitting dazed in the middle of the intersection. Despite the serious blow to both morale and motivation, Lao-puo carried on anyway. Barring an inter-city bus stopped in “our” (yeah right) lane and a tight squeeze to get by, there were no unforeseen problems.
She is very pleased with herself after the morning exercise—and rightly so.
We went back out in the afternoon on Esmerelda so that Lao-puo could look around instead of concentrating on the road. We took a little side road, and ended up at a lovely place called the Pine Grove Hostel. It’s a beautiful old heritage place located (not surprisingly) in a pine grove--on a bluff overlooking the harbour. We savoured the beauty of the place—until I read what it was. The Pine Grove Hostel was a stopover for kamikaze pilots during the war, and they were sent there before their final deployment. At first I was angry, thinking about the evil of those who exploited the idealism and devotion of all those good boys, then I got angry when I thought of the “comfort women” forced into sex in the occupied territories—and Taiwan too even though this was part of Japan during the war and the people were Japanese citizens. Then I relaxed and enjoyed the beauty of the place. There is a lovely outdoor coffee and cheesecake area surrounded by pine and bamboo, to which anyone who comes to visit us will be invited.
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