台灣環島日記，三

DAY 6

13/10， 7 pm
Sitting at an aboriginal restaurant

  Day fully spent within the surroundings of Sun Moon Lake. Struggled to find breakfast (!!!) in the nearby village (Yuchi). Visited the splendid temple complex at Wen Wu, where people pray to 月老 to find a partner. Some people will hang a selfie inside the temple hall, providing full name, Line and Instagram IDs. Took a break by the lakeside, under the foliage shade. Read Zhuangzi and replied to some friends. I am happy because I have the feeling of finally starting to understand what this book is talking about. I even recognised one of the episodes read in the book, which I saw displayed in a painting at the museum two days ago.

  After the break, I tried the tea eggs at the lake promontory near the aboriginal village. There was a sort of aboriginal music concert going on. I also saw another one later tonight. Here cultural appropriation does not seem to be an issue people are aware of. Finally, spent the last hours of sunlight at Ci’Hen pagoda. With that, I believe I visited nearly every landmark this lake has to offer. Sunset hours were reserved for a lakeside view. At first I was a bit distracted by the amount of photography going on all around me. Photography, especially photography of the girl on part of the boy, seems to constitute one of the core activities of the Asian dating lifestyle. You can tell the guy really puts all his heart in trying to make the girl look as pretty as the inevitable constraints of nature (plus a few camera filters) allow. Later on people left (dinner time?), missing the most beautiful part of the sunset, when the sky on the western side of the lake was painted with different tonalities of ocra, yellow, lily, violet, etc. This moment of the day made me feel particularly alone. I always end up thinking about my parents, how I wish they were with me sometimes, to see the same scenes that I’m seeing. And how life will never be the same. Even though I’m only 26, I suddenly already feel so old… What gives me the most anxiety is the fact that I’ve started working. Even though I am still the same person, something feels different. Something was lost. Moreover, as life unfolds, and the part of time that is out of human control, that is the past, grows larger… the feeling is of more and more doors closing in.

  Sometime later, sitting at the pier plaza: street singer/guitarist is entertaining a crowd of middle-aged women with Taiwanese classics (mostly songs from 鄧麗君). A young girl who was looking at me for the whole time decides to accompany her grandpa back to the hotel.

  We could say anything about the Taiwanese, but not that they do not have a huge heart. They will open up to you like I’ve never seen elsewhere in Asia. Tonight I’ve had dinner at the same place as yesterday. A group of grandpas noticed I was eating alone and offered me a glass of whiskey to cheer with them. They all studied international business in university, and were celebrating a sort of class reunion with their respective wives. Most of them were dead drunk, like I’ve only seen in Korea before. But they still made the effort to speak English (mixed with a bit of broken Mandarin) with me. It moved me a lot. Now I will continue listening to the street singer. Won’t be able to add a picture as phone already died.

DAY 7

14/10, 2:30 pm
At a gas station in the central mountains

  After heading back home from the street concert yesterday, I found the hostel owner, an old man, sitting in the veranda right at the hostel entrance, together with a woman with short black hair. I soon joined them and spent some hours conversing on Taiwan, Europe, “Formosa” and the Mainland. Then the old man left me alone “to talk with the beautiful Chinese lady” - as he said. I’ll be honest, I really wanted to have sex with her yesterday night. Her name was 美雯 (Michelle), and she told me she just turned fifty years old. I think she liked me, at least to some degree, because she accepted to continue the conversation alone with me even when the concierge at the hostel sent us indoors. We continued talking for about five hours, until it was 3 am. I discovered that she is married to a 外省人 (a person immigrated from the Mainland) and that she has a son my age and a daughter two years younger than me. I think this woman I met was not common. She was traveling alone to SML not long after quitting her job. She told me she graduated Master’s in Immunology and that she had been working for an American biotechnology company for the last twelve years. The reason for quitting was not explained clearly by her: she was very generic. She told me she was tired, but I sensed there must have been something else she was not sharing. Anyway, I didn’t insist on asking.

  I was hoping she would be divorced or something. Actually, her husband was her first and only partner (“first and last”, as she said herself…). She was really one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Her age gave her a sober, elegant, extremely attractive appearance. Her smile and her eyes so bright and innocent that they really did not show any sign of the passage of time. True beauty is indifferent to age. And there is beauty in age. I have met someone special. For some reason, I was reminded of those times, many many years ago, when I was in Corse with my parents. We were buying groceries and I was moving the shopping cart, when I bumped into another kid my age - a French girl. I still remember she was blonde and had blue eyes, but of course I don’t remember any more details than these. Another time, I remember it was in Bonifacio, I was almost a teenager, when I thought I had fallen in love with the waitress of a restaurant where we went to have dinner. I remember that she had a tattoo of two wings on her back: and I really thought she was some kind of angel. It turns out you can still fall in love in that way even later on in life. You can still feel that kind of absolute, almost innocent emotion: that incontrollabile push to love, which is just an expression of the most natural instincts all humans experience when growing up. Those same instincts that move birds to sing and announce the coming of spring, as one once said.

  I want to remember what we talked about during the night: graves and how people are buried in Taiwan/China; political parties in Taiwan; Japanese people and skiing; my career, her career, the need to change after 3 years in the same sector; she likes Shanghai better than Hong Kong, the harbour is wider; she encouraged me to visit China and consider working there; the anxiety of the uncertain political situation in Taiwan, and the necessity to go on with your life; she was confused at 26, and now that she is 50 she is even more confused; she cannot say if she is happy, neither she believes that life has any deeper meaning; she respects gods ghosts, but will keep away from them; she wants to go on a trip to Northern Europe; when traveling, she especially enjoys visiting churches and looking at the tombs of old people as a form of art; she likes stinky tofu and chicken feet but has never eaten chicken butt; etc. When she said - It’s time to go to sleep - we both just entered our cubicles. We didn’t even say bye. But she said she felt nice talking to me. She said I have to look at my manager’s job and see if I can improve it anywhere. I have to pretend to be my own boss. This way I will prepare for having a better career. She said it’s ok to have no plans at 26. But also if you want to try something do it now, because you cannot try anything anymore at her age. I’m not sure if I should look her up somewhere or just let her go.

  Today, I crossed Wu-Ling pass to Hualien. I write this from a gas station as the road has been closed until 3 pm for disruption (recently here earthquakes + heavy wind and rain). A nice couple offered to take a picture of me on the bike at Wu-Ling. They will move to Taipei next week. They were riding the motorcycle and going to Taichung for a music festival. With them, I did exchange contacts. Hope to see them again when back in Taipei.

P.S. Wu-Ling so far so good. Not at all as dangerous as they warned me.

-End of the third post in the Tour of Taiwan series.