Monday February 28, 2011

12:30 p.m.

I’m on the road and slowly making my way back to Taipei. I stopped at the Lion’s Head Mountain Visitor Information Center, and here I found a lovely outdoor coffee shop. I have a table in the shade next to a fish pond. A cool breeze is blowing past and pleasant music is playing. I had had some thoughts about doing one of the trails in this area. I still might, but I’ll probably just get back on the road and keep driving. I still have a lot of distance in scooter terms to cover in order to get back to Taipei.

I haven’t written for the last day and a half. There simply hasn’t been an opportunity or a pleasant place to write. I made it down from that high mountain resort with no problem. It was downhill the entire way, and I hardly needed to run the engine at all. I coasted the majority of the way and saved gas. I returned to Neiwan (stopping off in Zhudong to get gas) and spent the evening enjoying all the activity there. I had had to move into a room without a bath, since my room had been reserved. It was not a very pleasant room, but it did have a window and a balcony and from there I could watch the activity on the street. I went to bed quite early and after a morning cup of coffee, I packed up and hit the road.

The general plan was to finally get to this area around Mt. Lion’s Head. It is a famous mountain with many temples on its slopes. I never made it to that mountain, but I think I was better for it. I stuck with my usual pattern and turned down the smallest roads of interest that I could find. I was still on track according to my maps, but my maps turned out to be very incomplete and largely inaccurate. I ended up totally lost over and over again. I could never get my bearings. At one point, I saw a sign pointing to Five Finger Mountain, and I decided to check it out. The road was extremely steep and led to a very interesting area of temples and mountain trails. The mountain had the rough shape of a clenched fist with each bump representing one of the knuckles – hence Five Finger Mountain. There were supposed to be a number of interesting shrines on the mountain, but I never made it up there to check them out. Most trails in Taiwan are highly groomed and easy. They are more like boardwalks than trails. This trail, however, was the opposite. It was far too rough for a casual stroll. It was overgrown and thick spider webs crossed it. The trail itself was very rocky and the rocks were covered in slippery moss. The ground was very wet and muddy. I wasn’t in the mood for that kind of climbing and I contented myself with exploring the temples and the town itself.

At one point, I spotted an interesting set of cottages. I was pleased to learn they were part of a hotel. One rarely sees places like that in Taiwan. I loved the quiet up there on the mountain, and it seemed very central for some exploring. To complete its appeal were two tiny puppies at the entrance.

I knocked on one of the chalets that had the appearance of an office, and after some delay, a woman came bustling out. She told me to wait and she went to a second chalet to get her son to translate. He was roused after ten minutes of good-natured shouting, and they showed me the various chalets. They had seen better days, but they were more than comfortable. They cost NT$600 night, and I decided to make one of them my home. I walked around the temples taking pictures here and there. The whole area was typically Taiwanese in that money was spent in building it but nothing set aside for maintenance. That seems to be the pattern that rules the island. There were odd attractions, such as a small park with large dragons cavorting around. This had been built and then left to disintegrate. The shrines and temples were the same. I learned that there was a story to go with the mountain and the region – something to do with a monkey, but I didn’t get the details. One of the temples is one of the few temples in Taiwan dedicated to the Oven God. I can’t say that I can speak with any authority on religion in Taiwan. It is too confusing and I’ve long since stopped trying to make sense of it all. They happily borrow from every aspect of Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and even Hinduism and add it all to local beliefs. I don’t think the Taiwanese think about it too clearly themselves. They have the vague sense that there are deities of different types who can help them out, and it is in their interests to ask for their help from time to time. They go to certain temples at certain times of year according to tradition, leave offerings of food and drink, burn incense, burn paper lanterns and paper money. They bow three times to the various statues while holding the burning incense. Then they place the incense in the burner. I’m always surprised at how the young people are just as involved in this as the older people. When I get back to my apartment, I’ll have to look up the details of the Oven God and perhaps the Five Finger Mountain.

In the afternoon, I hopped on my scooter and went exploring. I found a beautiful road heading over some mountains to the west. It was a wonderful find – an old and practically forgotten road. It was high enough to have evergreen forests around. The jungle was slowly reclaiming the road, and wild flowers grew in abundance along the side. I eventually came down out of the heights to find myself on a busy road leading to the town of Nanzhuang. Nanzhuang was one of the towns I had intended to visit on this trip. I was under the impression that it was a quaint and quiet mountain village. When I saw it, I was very glad that I had followed my instincts and stayed on Five Finger Mountain instead. Nanzhuang was the kind of fake tourist town that draws people by the thousands. I parked my scooter across from the main part of town and then walked across a high suspension bridge. When I got to the other side, I turned right around and went straight back. So many people filled the narrow streets that I couldn’t even move. It was a total nightmare of crowds and people. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, and I raced back up into the mountains.

Back in Five Finger Mountain, I grabbed a stool in the market area and had two cans of delicious cold beer. The man who served me shouted “Have a seat!” Everyone around burst out laughing at his attempt at English. This is a typical example of what goes on all the time as I wander around the countryside. In Taipei, I’m accustomed to a certain cosmopolitan atmosphere. People are used to foreigners and I am nothing special. The countryside is a completely different place. I know that, but it still surprises me when I’m treated as such an oddity. I remember when I first came to Taiwan, I thought it was a much more worldly place than isolated South Korea. Yet, the countryside is every bit as isolated as South Korea ever was. Life here is unlike anything that we might experience in Canada. The best way I can describe it is as self-sufficient. They have this thriving tourism and life that simply goes on without the world ever knowing about it and without them ever knowing about the world. They march to their own drummer. And when someone like me shows up, it is a big event. It’s a good place to travel from that point of view. It feels very real. Certain towns, such as Nanzhuang, have a touristy façade, but it is for internal tourism. It is for the Taiwanese, and, as such, still feels new and fresh to someone like me. It has none of the fake air of, say, an elephant ride in Thailand – something that was set up for tourists from other countries. There essentially is no tourism from other countries here. They certainly have the resources for it. I predict that tourism will explode here at some point. There is a huge amount of infrastructure already in place. True, it is pretty much bizarre and less than useful for someone like me, but it is there. I couldn’t imagine traveling here as a backpacker. I think you must have your own transportation. I have my own transportation and I find that very challenging. To have all those challenges and then have to deal with local buses on top of that would be very difficult. It would be so difficult that I wouldn’t even attempt it. Then again, I’ve never been very happy about using buses and trains. That’s why I started cycling. And now scootering.

I wonder sometimes what spending all this time overseas has done to my mind. I’ve gotten so used to not knowing what is going on and feeling like I don’t belong that it feels perfectly normal. I sat there in the market area drinking my cold cans of Taiwan Beer and watching all the activity around me and understanding pretty much none of it. Hundreds of people had come up to these temples to pay their respects. Where had they come from? How do they live? How do they see the world? I have no idea. I speak to people all the time, but we come at life from such different places that we can’t even begin to find common ground. One quite elderly man stopped me near the trail to say hello. He and his wife were all suited up in hiking gear and were going to climb that trail I had dismissed as too difficult. The Taiwanese are unbelievable hikers when they retire. This man wanted to talk to me, and he spoke English, but he was frustrated in his attempt. He simply couldn’t make sense out of me. I was there alone on a scooter, and this almost seemed to make him angry. That he couldn’t figure me out upset him. He shouted at me very loudly, “Why in Taiwan? Why?” In another country and time I would have thought he suspected me of being a spy. Why else did I have no tour group? No bus to return to? In Taiwan, people do not drive scooters from city to city and through the mountains. It simply isn’t done. Scooters are for going to the corner store and driving in your town. Beyond that, they can’t be driven. That they are capable of long trips is perfectly clear to me. My scooter can hit 100 km/hr if necessary. I could drive it from one end of Taiwan to the other easily. But for the Taiwanese this is a constant source of amazement. And for this older man, it was so bizarre as to make him angry. At least it felt like that to me.

To be honest, I’m in the habit of lying in Taiwan. I lie all the time when people ask me personal questions. Most of the time, I fashion answers that will cause the least number of problems. What I really do and who I really am is far too difficult a concept for people in the countryside to grasp. I knew that nothing I could say would make this older man happy. There was nothing I could say that would make sense to him and explain my presence there. Even the people at my hotel/chalet were bothered by my presence. I ran into the son later on at a sausage barbecue stand. It turned out that the man barbecuing the sausage was his father and the little restaurant was also a family business. I got myself into trouble because I ordered a lot of his sausages, but they weren’t for me. The two puppies I mentioned were behind this. One of the puppies was in very bad shape. Its fur was matted and it had bad skin infections. It was also clearly starving for food and affection. There is little you can do in these situations. One of the recent crazes in Taiwan is for pet dogs. However, they don’t treat pets as we do. They are often neglected. I wanted at the very least to give this poor puppy a good evening with a full stomach. So I ordered a bunch of sausages for me and the puppy. The son took this opportunity to ask me questions. He didn’t get angry like the older man, but he was clearly not satisfied. He was trying to get at some kind of understanding of me, but none of my answers helped him in any way. I told him the truth – that I lived in Taipei, that I was traveling alone, that I had my own scooter and had driven it from Taipei, that I had never heard of Five Finger Mountain, that I had just stumbled across the place, that I had been to Nanzhuang and back that afternoon by scooter. This all astonished him and confused him. He was born there and in his entire life he had never been to Nanzhuang. How could I, a mere foreigner, drive there and back? How could I have found my way? How could I possibly drive from Taipei? How could I live by myself in Taipei? It all seemed the stuff of fantasy to him. Yet it is so simple and easy for us.

I was very tired that night, and after secretly stuffing the puppy full of sausages and then reading a book, I was underneath three heavy quilts and drifting off to sleep. I might have stayed up longer, but the temperature had plummeted and the high humidity meant that everything felt far colder than it was. The chalet itself was damp and unpleasant with a powerful smell of mold and mildew. The place never dried and everything was wet to the touch. It never became comfortable and there was little to do but go to sleep. I like that, actually. On my trips, I often adjust my sleeping pattern to match that of the sun. I always feel better when I do. With electricity and movies and TV, we set our own time. I like it when I’m forced back to matching the sun’s time. I think I was asleep last night by 8 p.m. and I was awake before dawn, woken by the crowing of many roosters.

I had no definite plans for today, this last day of my long weekend. I thought I might follow route 124 into some unexplored territory. The problem with that is that it takes me farther from Taipei, and I’d have to double back at some point – making my journey home much longer. I set off in that direction anyway, but I quickly got very lost. My maps were very clear, but they did not match reality and the roads were not posted in any way that matched either, so time and again I found myself climbing up to a dead end at the top of a mountain. When I finally found the clear route through route 124, the road got very difficult and rough. That was what I expected and wanted, but I didn’t think I had enough gas to complete that trip, and I had to turn around. Perhaps I can finish that route another time. It looked beautiful and interesting. I might actually have continued but the one problem with this weekend has been the lack of visibility. There has been a strong haze over the mountains, and the views have been very poor. The appeal of that route would have been the beautiful mountain views, and the haze blocked most of it. So I turned around and am now slowly making my way back to Taipei. I could so some hiking around here, but I’m not in the mood. I think I will miss all of this once I’m back in Taipei, but I must go back to work.

Tags: Five Finger Mountain, Hsinchu County Trip, scooter, Taipei, Taiwan, Taiwan Beer