a southerly run

We met our friends from the States Ray & Jenny for dinner a couple weeks ago. They were planning on going to Ray's hometown in southern Taiwan for Chinese New Year and suggested we went with them. We thought why not, since we'd been staying in Taipei long enough and the thought of going southerly for a change had occurred to us a couple times before.

Jiayi (嘉義) is a mid-size town some 150 miles south of Taipei. It took us about an hour and a half on a high-speed train to get there. We picked up the rental car at the station, then took a short drive to the newly opened National Palace Museum South for visit. This is a contemporary looking structure that hosts regional (South, Northeast and Southeast Asia) and topical (tea, fabrics, religions) exhibits rather than all-China treasures its majestic mother museum up north has been famous for. 

We then headed for the little village where Ray grew up and his mother still resides. Though growing up in Taiwan for the first 25 years of my life, this counted as one of the very few times I actually traveled in a little southern Taiwanese town like this. I found the streets wider and straighter and the city itself less cluttered than those bleak and drizzly coastal towns I am used to seeing in northern Taiwan.

Ray's mother is 80 but looked sprightly and treated us with great home cooking including some of her hand-made sausages. After the lunch Ray & Jenny took us for a tour of the town, strolling through his childhood elementary school and the river bank. We then encountered several public posters that tell how the town father Wongs (翁氏家族) emigrated from mainland China and settled here some 300+ years ago and their descendants thrived and became scholars, high officials, doctors and lawyers, etc. I found these stories quite amusing because I am a Wong myself but was born and grew up north in Taipei where my last name was a minority while here the whole town seems to pay utmost tribute to it!

We then headed southeast for a hot-spring resort for our final destination. We checked in a good-size, relatively modern hotel and took a hot soothing bath in the white muddy water that brings special reputation to this place before having a country style dinner--with free range chicken and wild boar meat, I suppose--and going to bed.

Then the earthquake struck, at around 4 AM, they say. With the epicenter just some 60 miles away, this Magnitude 6.4 temblor jolted us wide awake in bed. All things shaking and moving violently, windows chattering, desk jittering... my wife was confused and scared and I thought "wow this is a biggie..." Then it all stopped and went away and we fell asleep again.

We took some short hike up and down the resort area the next morning. Our train ticket was to take us home in the afternoon from the same station we arrived, but we heard from the news and the train's web site that all trains to and from the south were suspended due to that early morning earthquake. So Ray & Jenny drove us up north for about 80 miles to a main station in central Taiwan where it still operated and we boarded the train and went home Taipei safely, ending this short little venturous Chinese New Year excursion of 2016.

At National Palace Museum South

At hot-spring resort

           

An all-brick main street at Ray's hometown, paved and paid for by one well-to-do Wong family

Town posters telling great stories of the founding Wongs (翁) and their descendants,
who still make up 1/6 of local population 

        

Dentist 翁

Bete Nut 翁

Escrow 翁

Beef Noodle 翁

Congressman 翁

Soon to open "High-Heel-Shoe Church" at nearby township

better together

Did you ever really listen? Do you know how to say the right thing the right way? Would you like to reclaim the love and passion like you had them the first time? How about learning how to confront and resolve conflicts in life?

These were subjects covered by a 4-day "human relationship build-up" course I went to at a retreat center in suburban Taipei last week. It's a workshop-like course that stressed on hands-on practice besides teaching the "love" principle behind all these "techniques":

When listening, try all you can to put yourself in the other's shoes, without being condescending or judgmental or playing Mr. know-it-all, then rephrase what you hear with preambles such as "It sounds like..." "So you think..." "From what I hear...", ending with "Is that right?", to make sure you understand what they say accurately and more importantly to assure them that you do feel for them. "Empathy" is the word.

When you want to exercise "by golly somebody has to tell him/her the truth", remember it's the "truth" you must tell, not your own brand of justice or tantrum you want to throw at their expenses. And try to use the "I" statements to describe your honest feelings rather than accuse others of some sinister motivations you imagine they possess.

"New" doesn't necessarily mean "better", just something chronologically later than the earlier ones. When we say an antique looks "as new as it was a thousand years ago", we actually are praising the fact that it is in as good a condition as when it was first created. To keep or to revert back to the original goodness my heart was in, I need to check my thoughts (are they objective, double standard...), kick my psychotic trappings (escapism, perfectionism, victim mentality...), know my limitations (what I can do, what I cannot do...), and observe if any spiritual fruits are coming out of this.

Conflicts are a natural part of human relationships. Facing it and trying to resolve it can actually help us grow. To do so, empathize with your "enemy", explain your needs and desires honestly, keep your cool, and look all angles before coming up with a maximum possible common good solution for all. Mutual respect and understanding are thus earned and gained during the process, and all are winners already for that reason alone.

These were lessons taught and organized by Prof. Tsai Ren-Song (蔡仁松) and his wife and their ministry (佳美生命建造協會 Wonderful Life Ministries, www.wlmtw.org) in Taiwan. Prof. Tsai is a college friend of mine, who, after getting his PhD. degree at UC Berkeley and a couple of successful high-tech start-up ventures in Silicon Valley, went on to study theology at Fuller Theological Seminary and got a Master's degree there and became a "layman" pastor since. He has been a well liked and respected professor at Tsing Hua University and conducting this biblical principled human relationship betterment course with his wife since they came back to Taiwan 10 years ago, among other things.

I must admit I didn't plan on going through such intensive 4-day "boot camp" when I signed up for it a couple weeks ago. I was in fact lured by the swimming pool and gymnasium I saw at the website of the training center that came with the course info, that I thought I'd just come and see what's going on that Prof. Tsai has been doing for the last 10 years and relax and work out while I've got time to. It turned out I'd never got the time for those.

But it's a smooth sailing 4 days. Not only did I learn something useful, I got to hear some touching, personal stories, especially from Prof. Tsai's wife, about how they walked this long but joy-filled journey together throughout the years, spreading God's word in the most practical and realistic way they know how, helping people one heart at a time, humble and grand.

God bless Prof. Tsai, his wife, and the ministry!

Prof. Tsai is the 3rd from the left sitting at the front, his wife to his left in blue. All students except me and one couple are pastors or co-workers from churches and ministries all over Taiwan.

See what the clock says: 6 PM. We got one hour break for dinner after that, then the class resumed at 7 PM, lasted until 9 PM. It started at 8 in the morning.

This shows I didn't play hooky at all for four full days

man alone

Though my wife had scheduled and wanted to stay in Taiwan for four full months like we did last year, I decided to come back alone to the States for December just so to take care of things and have meetings I felt more comfortable conducting in person.

"Can you live well on your own?" that's what I figured had been on my wife's mind from the suspicious look and frequent reminding she'd been presenting me. So here's a testimonial of how a well domesticated man for 30+ years survived the trial of single living for 28 days. 

It sounds surprising (to myself at least), but the most challenging domestic chore to me was using the washer/dryer for the laundry. I practically had to write down the operating procedure and followed it methodically so I wouldn't pull the wrong knob or push the wrong button, select the wrong load size or forget throwing in a softener sheet when drying. (One of these days they'll come up with a touch-screen panel or a mobile app to make things easier).

When it came to sorting and folding the clothes after it's done, I didn't, just threw them all in one lump sack in the drawer. (Who's going to inspect how neat my underwear was arranged anyway).

Another serious doubt my wife had with me was my cooking competency. For that, as I proclaimed to her time and time again, a simple man like me needs only simple food: My default meal consisted of a hand-made sandwich of ham, tomato, lettuce, and a little mayo or salad dressing:

A kale wrapped hot-dog also qualified as simple and healthy food in my cookbook:

Sometimes just a piece of bread and a few pepperoni-wrapped cheese sticks with a glass of wine could very well a good meal make:

A $5 Costco barbeque chicken tided me over for 4+ meals:

And this generic hash I put together with left-over kale, tomato, onion, turkey, and minced hot-dog (that's why I called it "chopsuey salad") I brought to a New Year's Eve pot-luck party looked and tasted actually pretty good, in my humble opinion:

Then a man's chore in the house was never done: I cleaned the garage, 

propped up the leaning trees, 

harvested my organic garden (consisting of only one plant), 

replaced barbeque grill cover that could easily blow over, 

fixed the kitchen sink soap dispenser that took days of diagnosis and ordering the right parts, 

and dis-assembled an old bed and put up a new one.

                                  

I also did some human relationship uplifting by hand delivering Christmas presents to our gardener and house cleaner--boy were they glad to receive them!, and even got involved with local politics by voting out the incumbent board of our homeowners association that many of my neighbors hated!

I went biking with my cousin-in-law's, 

hiking on the new coastline trail near the new outlet mall in San Clemente, 

and almost went kayaking with my Club Med buddy Mel on New Year's Eve if I wasn't leaving so soon.

Nor did I slack up on my social activities. I attended small group birthday celebration, 

meditation group Advent celebration, 

men's group reunion at my backyard, 

and hosted friends from out of town.

All things proven and done, I happily returned to my wonderful, capable wife, where true home is, to be a pampered, defanged man of the house again for the next 11 months or so...

Happy New Year!

seesight kansai

It's only a two and a half hour flight from Taipei to Japan, and there are literally tours going there every day offered by various travel agencies, so my wife and I picked one we used before and off we went, for a 5-day trip to the Kansai region of Japan.

Kansai (關西) refers to the area situated in the west central part of Japan's main island Honshu. It is about 1/5 the size of Southern California with the same amount of people (23 million), and encompasses major metros such as Kobe (the 4th busiest port of Japan), Osaka (the second largest city of Japan), Kyoto (the thousand-year-old old capital of Japan), and many other historical sites and cities; a hub of political and cultural centers of the old and economic power house of modern day Japan, so to speak.

Autumn leaves scenery, Japanese gardening style, was one main attraction we came here for and saw, most everywhere we went:

​​ 

And temples and castles that came with different flavors: golden plated, stony majestic, red audacious, on the pond, up the hill ... awesome and unreal:

Mixed with events of the peculiar: tuna cutting show, hot spring foot massage, and fearless deer feeding:

Though I had been to Japan many times before--almost all of them business trips and restricted to Tokyo area, granted--this was the first time I saw so many a Kimono (traditional Japanese costume) wearing young woman (and man) out in the public:

                         

And kids and parents all dressed up to worship and take ritualistic photos at a "scholar patron saint" temple:

Not to forget the modern side of the metros, and the plain, calm beauty seen on the road:

Maybe I was under the influence, but I think Japanese food did look and taste more refined in Japan, at restaurant or off the street:

This was a little group of 22 people we traveled with. They came from all walks of life in Taiwan, young and old, couples and families, and were all nice, decent, and punctual. The hotels we stayed, except for the last one, were new, quality, and surprisingly spacious by Japanese standard. The meals were good and delicious, the itinerary tight but not too tiring. And I was most impressed by the tour guide, an energetic, passionate young woman who knew her stuff well and really took care of everyone. 

Over all, one nice little trip!