Journey's end (for now)

Three months of not much interesting
Min and I spent the last three months living in Hualien, Taiwan.  We didn't do much that's newsworthy, but I took a semester of Mandarin and greatly improved, and we're planning to continue living there and I'll continue studying.

Hong Kong & Taipei
I had to fly out to Hong Kong for twelve hours to get a visa, but the only thing I had time for was some fancy dim sum, the photo of which I've lost.  Min and I have taken the two-hour train ride to Taipei several times on weekends.  There's always good food and things going on.

Taipei is full of motorbikes, buses, and outdoor malls.  Nevertheless it's a really nice place to visit.

Learning Chinese in Hualien
I took classes at a local university in Hualien with some other foreigners trying to learn how to get by with Mandarin.  We had a diverse class: one each of Thai, Canadian, Japanese, Israeli, and American.

Min and I having beers with two of my classmates.  The proprietor gave us silly hats to wear for photos.

Hualien is very slow-paced compared to a place like Taipei.  The things to do are mostly outdoor activities like going to the beach, hiking at Taroko National Park, or river trekking.  It was relaxing at first, but I started itching to go somewhere busier after a few weeks.

Man fishing in Hualien

A mountain river close to Taroko National Park

Swimming hole I've been wanting to try

Off to the USA
I've flown to the US for a few weeks to visit friends and family and enjoy the things I miss from American culture.  I've been drinking a lot of coffee and beer and eating hamburgers.  Min is still in Taiwan, and we'll both be living there for a few more semesters as I work on my Chinese fluency.  We're not done traveling, but I'm guessing our trips will be shorter and more focused after this one.

I'll leave you with this picture of a spectacle of American hunting culture, Cabela's, which I saw with new eyes after being in Asia for so long.

Taiwan: Lanyu

Boats are no fun
The three-hour boat ride from Taitung to Lanyu was really rough.  I started our trip back in December being prone to motion sickness in vehicles as small as cars, and gradually became accustomed to riding in the top of wildly swaying buses on mountain roads.  I thought I was fine for a boat trip.  The ferry to Lanyu was the worst vehicle yet.  It was like being on a three-hour roller coaster; my perpetual thought was would it please just stop moving so I can have some peace?  The ocean isn't like that.  All day every day on every inch of the ocean waves rock and smash.  All along the coasts the ocean eats rocks, very slowly, by wearing down their will to live.

If that wasn't enough, I also had to figure out how to use a squat toilet on that boat.

Anyway.

Lanyu is beautiful
I wasn't really in much of a condition to appreciate it by the time we approached Lanyu, but the hills and coast of the island are gorgeous.

West coast of Lanyu
Canon 10-22@13, f/10, 150s, 10-stop ND

Mantou Rock (mantou is a kind of bun made of sweet bread)
Canon 10-22@10, f/13, 0.3s, polarizer

Twin Lion Rock
Canon 10-22@16, f/14, 6s, polarizer and 3-stop ND

The waves at the southern end of the island were always huge

Coast near the nuclear waste storage facility at the southern end of the island

The weather was cloudy most of the time we were there, and squalls came in quite often.  We got caught out and soaked three times.  The weather at the southern end of the island was particularly windy, and the rain there was like nails.

We rented a motorbike to get around the island.  There are only two roads so you can't really get lost, and going completely around the island only takes an hour or so.

I bought sunglasses just for this

Leaving our guesthouse

We did a lot of just puttering around looking at things and chatting with people.

Min enjoying the sun and the ocean

Sea snake

Traditional wet taro fields

And the goats!  Everywhere, goats.  Big goats, small goats, black goats, white goats, newborn goats.

Typical road users
by Min

Outside the door of our guesthouse, a curious young goat
by Min

Fighting goats
by Min

The goats walk everywhere they can

Newborn goat, still with umbilical cord
by Min

Kid up high, whining for his mother
by Min

While I was scrambling around on the coral taking photos, Min did something good with her time and cleaned up litter.  There were a few times that she picked junk out of a shot I was trying to take!

New Year ceremonies
We were lucky to be on Lanyu during the time that several of the island's villages call the flying fish with a ceremony on the beach.  We saw two ceremonies, both of which involved sacrificing animals.  The people of Lanyu have a special relationship with their animals and with food in general.  There are complicated rules for how you must divide up the meat when you kill a pig, depending on your relationships and who has given you food in the past.  It is considered bad form to pay money for food, and food bought as a gift is considered a much poorer gift than food you grew or raised.

The ceremonies took place just after dawn.  Only men were allowed to participate, and women had to stay off the beach for the duration.  However, it was still very much a family affair.  Fathers sat with their sons, and people chatted while they waited for the different phases to be completed.  It actually reminded me a lot of going to church.

The slaughter of a few large pigs was the most notable part of the ceremony for me.  I had never seen a large animal killed before, and it surprised me how matter-of-fact the whole process was.  To me it didn't seem degrading to the pig; it was just a very practical task for the men who held the pig down and cut its artery.  I was basically a vegetarian for a few days after seeing all the blood, though.

WARNING: the next photos show a pig being killed

Carrying a pig to the beach

This poor guy is doomed

Chatting and waiting.  The metal cone is a traditional helmet.

Carrying live chickens out on the pier to swing them over the water.

Taking the pig out

The man with the knife has just cut the pig's throat, and the others are holding him until he dies.  This was difficult to watch.

Removing the hair from the body

At the end of the ceremony, everyone gathered at the shore for some last shouted words, then they dispersed to celebrate for the day.

Snorkeling
Our host father took us snorkeling in the coral reefs, and he spear-fished for octopuses as he led us around through the water.  He, like the other island men, would regularly go out swimming to catch fish for the table.  There are rules for who can eat which fish, with some being restricted to only women or men (the women's are the tastiest), and shellfish are only for old people.  A man who catches only men's fish and nothing for his wife is a really bad husband.

The process of catching an octopus is straightforward, but it takes a lot of effort.  When our host saw a hole that looked like it had an octopus (i.e. small bits of shells strewn around), he would swim down with his spear and spear it.  The spear couldn't draw the octopus out, though, just hold it still, so he had to swim down and basically use a hook to wrestle with the octopus until he could pull it out.  The one he caught while out with us took him maybe ten dives, going down and wrestling before coming up for air each time.  Min got a video of him finally pulling the octopus out.

Net holding the octopus
by Min

Our hosts serving, among other things, the octopus.  They grew the taro as well.
by Min

Our host family's kitchen was always full of home grown taro and yams.  I love taro and yam!
by Min

The octopus: tough, but quite good
by Min

Traditional house
Our hosts were lucky enough to have one of the few traditional houses that survived the bulldozing by Chiang Kai-shek's government in the name of progress.  It's over a hundred years old, according to our host mother.  The house is set under ground level according to tradition, to prevent typhoon winds from tearing the roof off.  The roof has been replaced by tar paper, but the rest of the construction is traditional wood and stone.  You can't stand up inside, and have to crawl through the door openings.  In front of the house is a sloped seat back made of stone where the husband and wife sit and talk with each other.  Inside the house, the first room is for eating, the middle room for sleeping (with the father and boys on one side, and the mother and girls on the other), and the back room for smoking flying fish and meat and storing armor and artifacts.  They only sleep in the traditional house occasionally, using their new house most of the time.

Traditional house set underground, with the married couple's seat outside.

The sleeping room has generations' worth of goat horns hanging from the ceiling.

Body armor
by Min

Min with our host mother in the eating room.

We got to spend a night in the traditional house, which was pretty cool.  The floor was very hard, but the house was quiet and quite warm.

Me crawling through a doorway

A wedding
We were also lucky enough to be invited to a Lanyu wedding.  The groom was from Lanyu, and his bride was from Hualien (Min's hometown), oddly enough.  It seemed like the whole island was invited and seated at tables under huge tents.  I sat with our host father and drank beer and workman's liquor (保力達B), and Min entertained Saoqi, our hosts' grandson.

Family and friends gave speeches and sang karaoke

There were a lot of people at the wedding

Min with Saoqi

Back to Taitung
I realized near the end of our stay on Lanyu that I was about to overstay my Taiwan visa.  Instead of taking the ferry back and being seasick all day, we took a plane back to Taitung so I could fly out to Hong Kong and renew my visa.

So happy NOT to be getting on a boat

Bye, Lanyu!