gym, cafe, and tamsui

Having been staying in Taipei for well over three months, by default or by design, I have become a habitual visitor to a few places that weave the fabric of my life as an "expatriate" in a city I was born and grew up in decades ago.

There are commercial gyms and community sports centers pretty much everywhere in the city, but too crummy and crowded for my liking, so I decided to check on some "VIP Health Club" hosted by some five-star hotels offering their fitness facility to due paying members outside their hotel guests. There is one such hotel nearby where I live, about 10 minutes walk away, presumably perfect for regular visits. So I bought a one-day pass to check it out.

It has everything: workout floor, steam room, sauna, spa, and an outdoor swimming pool, nice and dandy. The show stopper, however, is the pool is on the 20+th floor of the hotel while the rest of the facility is on the basement floor. Imagine going half naked in between these places... Not for me.

Then I checked out this other hotel that we stayed during those pandemic quarantine times whose room and services we were quite happy with. It's got the same whole nine yards: spa, sauna, steam room, exercise equipment, and a two-lane outdoor swimming pool, at a smaller scale than the other one, but more ergonomically laid out and all on one same floor, with a nice service crew. I signed up with them right away.

I have since been going to the place averaging three or four days a week. My routine starts at the workout room, going through seven or eight different machines, morphing into the steam room for a sweaty detox, going to the outdoor pool for lap swimming, heading back in for hot spa, cold dip, hot spa, cold dip, then a long sit in the sauna room, before taking a shower and heading home, for a total of roughly two-hour run.

For its tiny footprint, one thing I was concerned about was it might be easily crowded out, especially for the two-lane-only swimming pool. To my pleasant surprise, that never happens. For all these times I've been using the facility, I have rarely met another swimmer at the pool, nor other users at the steam room or sauna cabin, and no more than two or three people at the same time exercising in the workout room or sitting in the spa. As I splay still in the cold water well, body heat reaching perfect equilibrium with the surrounding chill, all quiet and all alone, I feel more like being in a private meditative chamber than in a public sweathouse!

As for the commute, it's only two subway stations away from where I live. But I can—and prefer to—take the bus too, which comes almost every two minutes and allows open street views that the subway can't. Or on sunny days I'll take the city-run rental bicycle that gets me to the club about the same time as the subway or the bus—kudos to the excellent public transportation systems in Taipei!

There is literally one coffee shop at every street corner in Taipei. One day I strolled into one of these in my neighborhood and saw/heard a young musician playing viola at the corner of the store. I grabbed a table right next to him and started enjoying the music. They were a mixture of classic, folk, and pop scores, and all of a sudden I heard one that sounded mysteriously familiar, then I realized it was one of the songs that my chorus group in SoCal had been practicing for a while. So I chatted with him afterwards, and he said he—along with the City Orchestra—had actually worked with a chorus group from LA recently... He then played that song again just for me so I could record it...

He is actually one member of a string orchestra team the coffee house (a chain of three coffee houses plus one ice cream parlor) had recently organized. Consisting of about a dozen young male musicians, they take turn playing at each of these coffee houses, sometimes single, most of the time twosome or threesome in concerto, in the afternoon or in the evening, usually free (as long as you spend the minimum required consumption at the store), at times charging admission fees.

I took my wife to one of those evening paid performances and she loved it. It was a piano and cello concerto by two young men in their early 20's. The house was packed. We chatted with a middle aged woman who sat across our table, she said she'd been a fanatic follower of this particular cello player for quite some time. A younger couple sitting next to us said they were recent converts to such cafe concerts for its easy atmosphere and flexible hours that provide for an enjoyable evening at the end of a busy work day.

We have since been to all three of these coffee houses for their coffee/cake/meals with concerts, and got to know almost all the team members. They are in general recent graduates from musical schools, each with numerous performance and award records under their belt, and all very handsome (and cute)! Maybe that's why many of their fans are middle aged women and my wife always leaves generous tips to them at the end of their performances, with the excuse of "helping out these starving young musicians"!
 

Tamsui (淡水) is a seaside community a half hour away from Taipei City. It has been a popular go-to place for the townspeople, not only for its easy reach through the train, but also its unique mix of geographical beauty and legendary history.

It's where the river meets the sea, the old British consulate residence and the Spanish fort standing on the hill, overlooking the harbor where Dr. George Leslie Mackay, a Canadian Presbyterian missionary landed and established the first Presbyterian church in northern Taiwan some 150 years ago, and where local militia fought off an invading French naval fleet some 140 years ago.

I have visited the place quite a few times through the years: Strolling along the riverside boardwalks and the old-town district, crossing the harbor on boat and on bridge, visiting the old fort and the consulate residence and Dr. Mackay's dormitory turned modern day art gallery, besides bicycling all the way from Taipei to and around its coasts.

This time around, a friend who lives in the area took me on his sports car for a ride, to scenes I've never seen before: a couple of bucolic country roads hidden between major arteries, a fallowed rice paddy turned scenic pond, and some palace like structures that I wouldn't know are for cremation ashes storage had he not told me so.

We also went across town to have lunch at a beef noodle place whose chef-owner is an erstwhile general who used to run a big chain of beef noodle shops across the strait in mainland China until the pandemic hit and he decided to call it quits, retire and settle down here for good.

Another, contemporary legendary story going on in Tamsui, I suppose.

  

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septology – a novel

The plot—if there is one—is simple: An ordinary, if somewhat rebellious and gifted boy named Asle grew up in a little seaside village in Norway, dropped out from high school for art school, met and married the love of his life, a devout but free spirited Catholic, became a successful painter, lost his wife, lives a secluded life in the countryside except for a good faithful friend Asleik who watches out for him and keeps inviting him to his sister's house for Christmas every year...

And there was another painter with the same name and almost the same look as Asle living in the city, that he met and cared for, who was twice divorced, an alcoholic and ended up dead from it, and another woman who also has the same name and look as Asleik's sister who enjoys Asle's paintings as Asleik's sister does...

You've got some surreal feel already, don't you? But more, for the story is told through Asle's "stream of consciousness" narration that weaves his hallucinating memories, artistic musings, spiritual wonderings, and mundane activities in one day in one long sentence, one chapter, for seven consecutive days, seven chapters, that make up this 650+ page volume.

Through his own inner dialogue, Asle reveals his thoughts and ruminations on

God

"God put limits on himself by giving human beings free will,"

"God is not all-powerful, he is powerful in his powerlessness,"

"the greater the despair and suffering is, the closer God is,"

liturgy, symbolism

"when the people there, five or six or seven of us, stood up to take communion there was a wonderful sense of atonement,"

"both prayer and mass, and most of all the eucharist, can lead us closer to God, closer to eternity and nothingness, closer to the shining darkness inside us, because I experience that every time I go to mass or see the halo around the host, or the glimmer coming from it, the light, in the transfiguration happening, in the consecration,"

"the words are simple, they’re words everyone can understand, and that’s why the meaning too of these words is something for everyone, but if you get hung up on the literal meaning, to the extent you can, then the words become meaningless,"

art

"a good picture is a gift, and a kind of prayer, it’s both a gift and a prayer of gratitude, I think and I never could have painted a good picture through force of will, because art just happens, art occurs, that’s how it is,"

"my inner pictures in their own picture are always pointing towards something beyond themselves, there is a kind of longing for afar in all the pictures, and at the same time what the pictures are yearning for is always in them already,"

good and evil

"it's from God's darkness that the light comes,"

"even if good and evil, beauty and ugliness are in conflict, the good is always there and the evil is just trying to be there, sort of,"

silence

"a painting is a silent voice that speaks, and the voice says that there is a silence that at the same time brings something close,"

"God’s language speaks silently from everything that exists, and this silence was first broken when The Word came into the world,"

"mother Judit could kind of just fall into herself and become silent,"

mysticism

"isn’t God just something that is, not something you can say anything about?"

"it’s when you understand that you can’t understand God that you understand him,"

"The Bible has to be interpreted, has to be read metaphorically, yes, like it’s not the real thing but a picture, like a painting, with its own truth, because The Bible is literature, and when it comes right down to it literature and visual art are the same thing,"

It does no justice to the book to group thoughts and ruminations the way I just did, for 1) thoughts and ruminations are in truth interrelated and cannot be bounded by abstract topical grouping as such, and 2) the book does an excellent job capturing the random, spontaneous and free flowing nature of the inner working of human mind by faithfully recording the protagonist's ever wandering, overlapping, reappearing "I-think"s as they arise, in simple but rhythmic proses, that is smooth, tranquil, incantational telling of a solipsistic tale.

And a mesmerizing read for me.

For the book:
https://www.amazon.com/Septology-Jon-Fosse/dp/1945492759/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

kinmen

Kinmen (金門) is a group of small islands off the southeastern coast of China. Far away (116 miles) from Taiwan but within view of mainland China, it had been a fierce fighting ground between Communist China and Taiwan from late 1940's through the Cold War era and remained under Taiwanese military administration until the early 1990's, when the tension between China and Taiwan eased.

I went on a tour organized by my college alumni association for a three-day-two-night visit to this once dreaded no-man's land for the first time.

Tunnels and fortresses everywhere are signs that Kinmen had been synonymous with war-zone for nearly half a century. There are over 50 miles of tunnels dug underneath the island's rocky terrain, caves for command centers/ammunition storage/meeting halls, etc., and waterways for supply ships. There is a rampart on a tidal island, cannon hide-outs on the hills, machine-gun embankments and tank stations all around.

 

 

And there are villages—yes, people had been living here long before (and after) the mid-20th-Century Chinese civil war made it a hellish battlefield. They are traditional South China cluster housing with familial courtyards, and Western style "trophy mansions" commissioned by overseas Kimeners who made it out there after emigrating and working hard for years in Southeast Asia.

 

With hardy soil, limited water supply, gusty seasonal winds, about the only agricultural plants Kinmen can grow are whit and sorghum, and they make the best out of it by turning them into high quality Gaoliang Wine (高梁酒) that now takes up 80% of Taiwanese hard liquor market and generates $400 million annual revenues for the islands.

 

During the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1958 (八二三砲戰, nine years after the first one, 古寧頭戰役 in 1949 when Communist China tried massive invasion of the islands and failed), over 480,000 artillery shells fell on the islands in 44 days. The ingenuity of Kimeners came to work again after the crisis, converting the deformed/defused bombs into sharp, durable kitchen knives that became yet another famed commercial success for Kinmen.

 

Though I was never stationed in Kinmen during my military service in Taiwan in the early 1980's, I saw on this trip the same weaponry—anti-air machine guns and cannons—my military unit was equipped with in mainland Taiwan; I also heard anecdotal stories from some of my fellow travelers—many of them about my age—who had served in Kinmen during those times: One almost got shot on his first day in Kinmen when he went out for relief and got stopped by a sentry demanding password and he forgot what it was; another served as an artillery commander and lost his partial hearing permanently due to constant exposure to the cannon gun firing. And we all heard of the gruesome "midnight slaughtering" by enemy seal men who came ashore at night and cut-throat a whole platoon at sleep, and the massive shootings by disgruntled soldiers against their own officers or fellow soldiers...

As I remarked one evening at the banquet table in the five-star hotel we stayed at, it was unthinkable the peace and prosperity we would have today at Kinmen versus the paucity and precariousness we had four decades ago... May the former continue for a long long time, and the latter never come again!

Happy Thanksgiving!

* For more photos and narratives of the trip, go to 

https://www.facebook.com/media/set?vanity=cdwongx&set=a.10231341035934289

emptiness 空

Went to a seminar at a Catholic university in Taipei on one Buddhism school's interpretation on Emptiness.

到輔仁大學旁聽一個佛門學派（中觀，根本中論）對【空】的解釋。

"The world is one big illusion, nothing has its real own-being, all things are cause-effect related" are some fundamental assertions of Buddhism, as you may well know, but here's some simple, interesting logic this particular Buddhism school (Madhyamaka) uses to explain them:

【婆娑世界只是幻象，不存在本相，萬物互為因果】是我們熟悉的一些佛門基本信念，中觀學派卻以一套簡單，有趣的邏輯思考來闡釋這些道理：

When we say something has some quality, it implies that "thing" and that "quality" both exist at the same time, otherwise that thing shows no such quality, and that quality has nothing to apply itself to.

當我們說某物具有某種特質時，隱涵的意義是該物與該特質是同時並存的，若不然則該物無該特質可顯現，而該特質則無該物可附著。

Similarly, the concept of cause requires and cannot occur without the concept of effect, and the concept of effect requires and cannot occur without the concept of cause. When "x is the cause of y," it implies that the requirement for y is built into the nature of x.  

同樣的道理，【因】的觀念必須有【果】的觀念同時存在才能成立，【果】的觀念也必須有【因】的觀念同時存在才能成立。當我們說【甲是造成乙發生的原因】時，我們意指造成乙發生的元素已經存在甲裡面了。

 
Since the truly existing own-being of a thing has to exist autonomously, independent of the aid or influence of anything else, this built-in need for an external condition will preclude real own-being. Therefore the world is not real, but one big illusion.

既然真實本相是自有而不需依賴或受外來因素影響的存在，這個萬物皆隱含需外力誘發才能顯現的世界並非本相，而是幻象存在。

This doesn't mean the "worldly" things we experience daily do not have their effects on us, or the seeds won't sprout, or a person's actions cannot achieve their intended effects. Like objects experienced in dreams, reflections seen in a mirror, echoes, and like illusory creations conjured up by a skilled magician, they all seem so real and fancy changing.

但這並不表示我們生存在這個【俗世】裡的所有感受都是不真實的，或者種子不會發芽，人的努力不會有成效。而是我們如同活在夢裡，或看著鏡中的影像，或聽著迴聲，所有一切就像一個高明的魔術師為我們製造出的幻象，讓我們感覺他們是多麼真實又富變化。

But the real real behind all these has always been in a state of calm. "One need not seek deliverance from things that have never existed but must merely awaken to the true state of affairs," as concluded by Dr. Anne MacDonald, the speaker from Austrian Academy of Sciences of Vienna.

但隱藏在這些繁複背後的卻是一貫平常的真實本相。如同來自維也納科學學術研究院的主講人Anne MacDonald的結語所說的：【人們不需追求逃離原本就不存在的虛無世界，而只需覺醒看見萬物的本相。】

​

language

You are in a fog of mind, and I ask "tell me what you think," out comes from your mouth a string of words that make sense to both you and me...  Ah, the twin magic of language: it organizes our thought, and communicates it to others.

To what extent does language aid us in expressing our innate thinking, or it actually forms and develops our thought, is still debatable in the academic circle, but no one denies the ability to use language to communicate and coordinate group actions is one key evolutionary advantage that helps human species reign supreme in the natural world.

Compared to the ephemeral exchanges among a number of people limited by how far the sound waves can travel and remain audible that is spoken language, written language has the advantage of presenting our thought and idea in clear, structured form in plain view that allows easy review and revision, and more importantly, when kept on formidable material, transition and distribution of what's recorded on it.

Without a centralized writing system, there would not have been a Chinese civilization over its diverse ethnic and geographical compositions through thousands of years, just as the Western civilization would not be what it is today had it not carried the Greek-Latin languages through the medieval times. The written language is so powerful it could even revive its spoken counterpart: see how the ancient Hebrew language was brought back from the dead to become the day-to-day, verbal and literal lingua franca of Israel today!

While on the subject of audio (spoken language) vs visual (written language): The alphabetical language, due to its phonetic nature, molds the sequential, logical thinking of the Western mind, while a hieroglyphic language such as Chinese that has both audio and visual components built-in in its semantical characters (形聲字=形思惟+音思惟) induces the more holistic (logical + emotional) thinking of the Eastern mind, or so say some oriental cultural nativists.

In my own theory of language, human consciousness is like one big, fluid dark hole that, once a bit part of it gets perturbed by a thing or emotion, consents to use a word or expression for that thing or emotion that it thinks triggers the same perturbation experienced by other conscious beings.

And that assumption always has some margin of error, thus a word or expression will mean differently between people of different cognitive dispositions or cultural upbringing, sometimes subtly, sometimes disastrously.

The dark hole is so huge that our existing language can only cover a tiny bit of our conscious cosmos, that's why we are constantly creating new words, twisting old words with new meanings, using metaphors and analogies to explain things, etc.

There is a form of literature, poem, that uses minimalistic words and obscure expressions on purpose, so as to leave room for readers to "fill in the blank" from the grab bag of their seemingly bottomless conscious mind.

All can speak, but not all can write,
What things can you tell me that words cannot describe?

Be bothered not by a stirred mind,
All shall subside into a good night!

south america

Following our previous trip to Ecuador and Peru, we continued to learn the ABC's (Argentina, Brazil, Chile) of the South American continent: Specifically, we visited three major cities (Rio de Janeiro of Brazil, Buenos Aires of Argentina, Santiago of Chile) and one natural attraction—the Iguazu Falls on the border of Brazil and Argentina, on our 13-day tour to South America in August.

Rio de Janeiro, the city by a river (Rio) discovered by the Portuguese on a January (Janeiro) day over five hundred years ago is a geological spectacle, straddling over a river mouth dotted with rock islands, surrounded by mountains and peninsulas, beaches and bays and lagoons, all under the watchful eyes of a man-made wonder, a 30-meter tall 28-meter wide Christ the Redeemer Statue standing on top of a hunchback-shaped mountain. It's a lively city with year round beach parties and "Samba schools" preparing for the annual carnival parades that vivify the heart and soul of the city!

Located on the river that separates Brazil and Argentina, Iguazu (Indian word for "big water") Falls are wider than the Victoria and taller than the Niagara Falls. We walked one trail on the Brazilian side and three on the Argentine side to view this great natural wonder from afar and aside, above and below, up close and personal on bridges that led us to yards away from the roaring downpour whose water flutters had us wet all over.

Buenos Aires was yet another city by a (way wider) river mouth, but without the jagged geography, only a serene waterway with silvery glitters and a city landscape reeked of European charm (the "Paris of South America," as they say). We went to a dinner theater and enjoyed a great Tango show and a suburban ranch that took us for a wagon ride and a cowboy skit for a taste of the Argentine "Wild West" of the old.

Crossing the Andes, we landed on Santiago, the capital of Chile. Landlocked by the snow capped Andes and a coastal range, the city seemed to hold a dignity of its own, yet felt more approachable than Rio or Buenos Aires. We also went to a winery for the country's famed wine production (Chile is the world's fourth largest wine exporter), and a seaside city donned with cliff top houses, colorful stores, artistic murals, and street musicians.

Then there were people we traveled with: Bob and Judy were a couple from Florida in their mid 70's who'd been traveling around the world since Bob's retirement a decade ago, while Julie and Ron, another couple from Florida in their early 60's who still owned and ran their own business, just started their traveling track now. What's strikingly similar was both couples married young, to their high school sweethearts, and had their first kids while in college!

Ryan and Molly were a young couple in their early 30's from Texas. Molly was born in Palestine but grew up in LA and still had a father living in Lebanon. Ryan was a Walmart project manager who carried a GoPro stick that automatically recorded 360-degree high quality videos as a drone would wherever he went, from whom I asked and got a couple of great clips of the Iguazu Falls scenes for my own records!

Aline was a true-life coal miner's daughter from West Virginia, who joined the Navy to escape poverty when she was young. Now in her 70's, she still walked big, steady strides that oftentimes left us youngsters behind. Unfortunately she got struck down by Covid during the last couple days of the tour and we missed our chance to say goodbye to her at the farewell dinner.

There were two multi-generation families in our group: Margaret was a quiet African American old lady who had worked all her life in a Queens' school district in New York, her daughter a school counselor, and the granddaughter a sweet, disciplined, athletic teen-ager who jogged every morning throughout the tour.  

Rosie was an energetic, passionate Latina who loved her job at Southern California Edison helping vendors do business with SCE. She brought her two aging parents who at times needed wheelchair assistance for sightseeing. Her father came to the States as a dirt poor immigrant and through hard work and a bit of luck had become owner of a tire store that he now delegated to his two sons to manage. He and his wife were quiet and probably didn't speak much English but had the bright smiles of happy, contented parents who had worked hard all their lives and were now being taken good care of by their loving offspring.

Traveling is a journey of discoveries, and sometimes you bump into things you have never heard of, or "myths" that nobody has definite answers for. For example, before this trip, I didn't know there were rumors that long before Christopher Columbus "discovered" the New World, ancient Phoenicians had appeared in the South American continent and left their marks on a rainforest mountain outside the city of Rio de Janeiro:

And have you heard of the urban legend: As storms in the Northern Hemisphere always spin counterclockwise and those in the Southern Hemisphere always clockwise due to Earth's rotation movement, so does toilet water in the Northern Hemisphere always spin down counterclockwise while that in the Southern Hemisphere always clockwise?

Well, I cannot give you definite answers on whether Phonecians had arrived in South America long before Columbus did since I am no archaeologist nor geologist, but as for the toilet water swirling down thing, I can tell you something about it since I had done some experiments of my own at various locations of the Southern Hemisphere continent I just visited.

 

But that'll be another story for another day!

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For more photos and details of the trip:

Rio: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10230815618439180&type=3

Iguazu: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10230816938752187&type=3

Buenos Aires: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10230818021379252&type=3

Santiago: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10230886472890497&type=3

a little trip

We drove north to the Bay Area to a high school friend of mine Michael's home the week before last, stayed there overnight, then went to visit another high school friend Joseph who was recuperating from a cancer surgery and a couple of chemo treatments since early this year. Joe was my best friend in high school who drew me to Christian faith in Taiwan. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just last August. Shocking news to us all and I'd wanted to visit him but could not until now. He looked even thinner than his usual thin self and was still adjusting his diet trying to gain back weight but seemed very well taken care of by his wife and hired help and in good spirit. We had long, vigorous conversations (wearing masks, at their yard outdoors) for the whole morning, before finally bidding farewell and wishing him a smooth recovery and left. 

We then drove northeast to a little rural town in inland California for a wedding. It was for the son of my best friend from elementary school Sunny who passed away almost three years ago. It was a lodge in the woods with a little pond, volleyball, mini-golf fields, pine trees and lawn, etc., a modest but relaxing environment. We stayed there for two nights, attending the pre-wedding rehearsal dinner the first night, then taking a stroll in the woods, attending the wedding ceremony and the reception dinner party the second day. It was a very happy occasion. We knew the young couple for some time (they'd dated for over seven years), but met the bride's family and friends for the first time. All very nice, folksy people. I was also impressed by the maturity the son had become and how blessed this marriage looked to be, and happy for Sunny who must be looking down in heaven smiling.

We then drove back to Michael's home in the Bay Area again, and had dinner with him and his wife and another college/high school friend in the area, Ching-Cheng. Ching-Cheng was one of the early achievers to the monumental "Grand-Pa" status ("做人成公") among our class, whose cap-headed picture at his grand child's birthday party inspired me to create and make "Come Spring Again" hats (回春帽) for all our classmates a few years ago. His knowledge broad-span and witticism entertained us as usual, but nothing soothed my ears more this time than hearing him say that new studies had found high cholesterol levels do not cause harm to Asian males...

Michael took us to a grand dim-sum restaurant for early lunch before we left town the next day. I so admired this "side-kick" friend of mine since high school and his wife who had hardily and beautifully raised an autistic son and a wonderful daughter Carol whose wedding I just witnessed last year in New York City. Carol and Andrew, their new son-in-law, had planned and booked a joint vacation for them and Andrew's parents for the coming months in Canada...  The start of a rewarding second half of their life they well deserve, I could tell.

Happy Summer!