Partly due to the jet lag, and partly due to my incurable need of daily exercise that has been programmed into my living gene through the years, I will walk out of the house in the early morning, to a community park nearby, and do some exercise there.
I will walk past that little Presbyterian church that my two elder sisters said they'd been to a few times when they were little, mostly for the fun and candies they gave out. I will walk past a police station, seeing some well suited-up patrol cars and motorcycles lining up to the curb, a good indication of the better clout the policemen get nowadays. I will also pass by that little 4 story corner building where I lived during my kindergarten-junior high school years. It seems just yesterday when the little kindergarten van would come to pick me up and my dear young mother would wake me up from bed; and when all kids in the block would gather after school to play dodge ball, chase and hack each other with "hand swords" in the evening and sometimes late into the night, with all the energy and rowdiness kids of that age could generate--the sounds of "baby booming" of our times, so to speak.
I'll then cross a major street, a hundred yards to the left after the crossing is the elementary school where I went for my basic education. It was one of the most "populous" elementary schools in Taipei at that time, hosting over 60 students per classroom, 26 class units per grade, for a total of around 10,000 students. It had some tiny green belt surrounding its exterior walls that we had to take turn cleaning as students. Now it's all torn up, replaced by brick walkways and a new subway station entryway nearby.
Then I'll pass a "mansion," the only single family, detached home (using the housing terminology we are familiar with in the US), with its own front yard and driveway, that you can find within kilometers around in this part of the town. We'd often wondered what kind of people lived there or who the owner was--must be pretty well off, we thought. It is still the only housing of its kind around here, but now the building looks a bit tired, and the garden not as well manicured as it should be, and there are so many real grand "mansion" homes (豪宅) in this affluent city today that it looks like an old relic from an olden time.
A few steps down, there is supposed to be a girl's home-making vocational school since I was a kid. I said "supposed to" because I never knew where that school was--probably hidden behind some walls in some nearby alleys. But I do see many young girls in uniform stepping out of the bus or walking around this area during early morning hours. Their dress reminds me of some pretty, classy high school girls I secretly admired and hoped to bump into during my morning walk to school when I was that dreamy, dumb little lad at my teens.
Then I am at the park. It has been transformed quite a bit since I was a kid, mostly positively. From just a wild open field with grass and bushes, beetles and dragonflies, it then had circled gardens, a labyrinth maze, a soccer field, some tennis courts, and a jogging trail. But none of the changes is as big as the one brought about by this International Floral Expo thing the city started building up for a couple of years ago. It basically overhauled the whole park with several exhibition houses and new landscaping. It was a great, successful redevelopment, but it disrupted the daily use of the park during the construction--the majority of the park was cordoned off limit and many exercise groups had to relocate outside the park to continue their daily workout; the jogging trail was so carved up by the construction zones it left each jogger jumping their own hoops around the park if they hadn't given up the idea of jogging there altogether. But now that exposition is over, it is gradually reopening itself to the public, and to those exercise groups in particular.
I walk in the park, and see those same groups of people I have been seeing for the past 10-15 years well back in action again: A Zen-style qi-gong (氣功) group practicing the simple inhale-exhale, leg-and-shoulder movements; a mostly women group doing aerobics with American pop music; and a Tai-Chi group, which subdivides into 3 small groups, each to its own proficiency level, gesturing along with taped instructions.
Though I know I shouldn't be jogging again--taking cues from the painful experiences of recent years with my inflammation prone feet--I can't help but try trotting just a few steps when I get to the spot where I used to start jogging, and I feel fine. So off I go again.
The old jogging route had meter marks painted on the ground and traversed the park all the way. The meter marks are now gone and part of the route is now occupied by new buildings and plant plots, but without any debris or fenced-off area, this is definitely a joggable park again. I see a couple of old faces who I know have been jogging here for years, and meet a friendly "foreign maid"--woman from southeast Asia who comes for domestic work here on work visa--who smiles at and says "good morning" to me. By the way, I have seen more and more old people on wheelchairs accompanied by these domestic workers strolling in the park in recent years. Though I haven't seen any of them today--probably because they haven't heard the park is open again--I am sure they'll come back gradually soon.
When I approach the corner of the park where the Tai-Chi groups are practicing, I sneak a view at the crowd and find someone I have been looking for--my elementary school teacher Mr. Lin. I first met Teacher Lin at the park back 10-15 years ago, a surprise teacher-student reunion so many years after the elementary school. I then saw him from time to time through the years when I came and did my jogging at the park. I haven't seen him for the past couple of years, though, and was a bit concerned that he might no longer be around--he's about the same age as my parents after all. But now here he is again, looking as healthy as he was 10 years ago. Doing Tai-Chi must have done him good all these years, I figure.
I decide not to disrupt his Tai-Chi practice and continue on with my jogging, and finish it with the usual 3 rounds like before. No pain or discomfort on my feet or any part of the body. I can live to jog for another day now.
Then I head home. Strolling down a bigger street than the one I came from, I start thinking, whether I should have my breakfast at one of the soymilk joints (豆漿店), or pick up an oyster noodle soup (蚵子麵線) at a street peddler, or some hand-made sandwich at some new generation breakfast stop or a convenience store, or sit in and eat pig-tripe noodle soup (冬粉豬肚湯) at an old style noodle shop...
Tough decision to make to start a day,
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