Ghost Month

Last night was the 15th day of the 7th lunar month (Ghost Month), and Keelung held it's celebrations as usual, despite the rain-on-rain-off typhoontastic weather. The 14th day is for the parade and candle lighting, and the 15th - the one I attended - is the massive food offering, prayer and throwing of food at people. All around your city you may have noticed huge offering tables outside businesses and larger than usual fires outside houses (enough that the smoke changed the quality of the air in Taipei, which is amazing considering how bad it can already be at times). Keelung takes that to an extreme.

I apologize that the following photos are in no particular order, but it should be clear how things went down anyway.

Some photographers checking out the crowd.

Every year, a different clan sponsors the decoration and food-buyin' and leads the prayers. This year, as the sign says, it was the Zhang clan. Since my name is Zhang - not really but it's my Chinese surname - they asked me to be in one of the formal portraits of the clan. I kind of hope that one will make it into the temple where the keep the clan photos for each year.

For the offerings, long tables were set up full of food, some of which is shown below.

This year there were more foreigners than usual. Last year we were the only ones. This year nobody could come with me so I went alone, and saw a lot of Westerners. Despite our increased presence, the local kids were fascinated as usual.

Toward the end of the evening, some Zhangs got up on the dais in front of the temple and, while singing incantations, flung food (fruit, bread, candy etc.) at the crowd. I got a few videos of the throwing but no photos - didn't want to get beaned on the head with a snow pear while trying to take a picture.

Incantations...

Still more incantations...

Just before that, the Zhang family and basically anyone else who wanted to participate walked around the offerings with incense, praying for it to multiply. Then some Zhangs donned traditional clothing and led more prayers.

People walking around.

The walkway up to the temple was also decorated...in the classiest possible way. I love the subtle play of light and color, so minimalist you'd hardly notice it. (snicker) Apparently ghosts like serious bling.

One of the displays around the temple was of figurines. When the offshore typhoon caused sudden downpours, they were protected.

This boat is made entirely out of rice flour goo and painted - it's a food offering. The characters say, basically, "Celebration - Zhang Clan - Ghost Month"

Around the temple, banners are hung. The writing on these, visible in another photo below, is not Chinese. They're special "spirit characters" meant to invoke various things.

As you can see, this set of photos uploaded backwards - the sky is getting lighter. That's not the ghosts coming.

The temple where this takes place is on a hill and while it's brightly colored all year, only at this time of year is it blinged the heck out.

This balloon pig looks mighty happy considering what's happening to his people below:

Ouch.

I wonder what she sees under there...

Like some sort of medieval punishment.

How funky is your chicken?

Decorating teapots made of rice - all of this food is made of rice goo and painted. Not edible to humans but perfectly ingestible to ghosts. At the end of the night you can keep whatever you can get your hands on, but since you can't eat it (and we have a cat who would try) I only took some orchids.

Rice fish.

Rice spiders.

Rice beetles.

Rice guy with dragon between two cones of bread.

This is how the temple normally looks - minus a few million lights.

Around the temple, to please the ghosts, the sponsoring clan erects shiny depictions of various gods. I think this is Guangong.

...and tinfoil elephants...

Here are the spirit-character banners I mentioned above.

Su Ho Paper Museum + handmade paper shop

I stopped into the Su Ho Paper Museum today, just east of the Songjiang/Chang'An intersection (buses 642, 643, 280, 222 and several others go there), and the paper shop a little farther east of that - the Chang Chuen Ever Prosperous Group, which sounds so stereotypically Chinese that it makes me smile. The purpose was to buy paper for making homemade cards that I love to create for friends and family, and to get ideas for our funky, low-cost DIY wedding invitations. I love working with paper so whatever we choose not to use for the invitations will eventually be used in cards or other works of art.

Some of what I bought, with strips of the larger sheets for ease of experimenting:

The blue and purple Nepalese block print came from a larger sheet purchased at the museum (NT120 or 180, I forget) and the rest came from Ever Prosperous. Opinions on which ones would make the best decorative paper for invitations - think "funky and fun", NOT "Wedding" - are welcome! We have no color schemes because we agree that a 'color scheme' is ridiculous for what is basically a big party, but you can see that I prefer dark, rich colors. Brendan has no opinion but generally likes my taste.

The Su Ho museum, well-decorated but in an ugly storefront, is worth a visit if you also plan to make paper, but if you're just coming to poke around, the NT100 admission is a bit steep (NT180 for admission and papermaking). They do have a shop stocking gorgeous, high-quality papers that are also artistic, but the Ever Prosperous store a few doors down has a much larger selection. If you are in the market for handmade paper in general it's worth checking out both so you can see all of what's available.

Some photos from the Su Ho museum, which I took before I realized that photography is prohibited (oops, but at least I didn't use flash):

Paper...things...displayed artistically.

From an exhibit of black ink drawings of creepy stuff on handmade thick paper. It has a very Edward Gory-esque name, which fits the photos as you can see. It's running through September 21.

This sculpture of a woman is made entirely out of paper - her face, headdress and clothes. Cool!

The Butterfly Effect

The following is a somewhat sappy tale, but it's entirely true and, I figured, worth mentioning.

About a month ago, my student's grandfather died. He was 92 and had lived a good life, so while his family grieved, they were also heartened that he lived to such an old age and was in good health for most of it.

He lived in a more traditional time when men ran the household and brought in money, women married young and kept house while popping out babies and children were firmly controlled by their parents up to and often after their own marriages. Daughters were not always wanted, and were often given away to infertile families as open, semi-official adoptions. Some were sent to live with other families with the understanding that they would be raised as daughters (or maids, depending) until they could marry the son of the house. That's exactly what the old grandfather did with his three daughters; he sent them away to live with other families so as to concentrate on raising his sons. The daughters knew where they came from, though, and often came home to visit.

They visited again when the old grandfather died - one a professional swimmer married to another athlete, the other successful in the banking industry and the third a homemaker in name, but everyone knew she was the brains behind the family business. The old grandfather's own family business happens to be fishing; my student was sent to study and work in business while his brother, it was decided, would continue in their traditional industry. They were not typical fishermen, however - they were in the toro tuna business. Toro is one of the highest quality tuna fish in the world; it's used for sushi and sashimi and is widely considered a luxury good. What I mean is, while laying in his casket, the grandfather may have looked weathered and saltwatered from years of fishing, but that casket and the flowers and other funereal gifts surrounding it were quite lavish.

In China and Taiwan, people often believe in something called tou qi - or the seventh day. On the seventh day, it's said, the soul of the departed returns to earth. That soul, apparently, is embodied in a butterfly - hence the famous opera "Liang Zhu" or The Butterfly Lovers.

On the seventh day, just before the funeral, the entire family including the three adopted daughters was in the family's ancestral home in Yilan in an area that does not have many butterflies, even though Taiwan is well-known for being packed with butterflies in general. According to my student, a butterfly flew in through the window and alighted on the grandfather's body - setting aside my own queasiness from the idea of keeping a departed loved one in the house for seven days - that was apparently something big. The butterfly then took off, touching the heads of everyone in the room and the grandmother, now a widow, twice before leaving again.

Astounded, the family had the eldest son throw fortune blocks to ask - Was that you as a butterfly? Yes. Did you come back to say goodbye? Yes. Are you happy now? Is everything OK? Yes. Yes. The family's sadness lifted, if just a little bit.

My own student told me he hoped he'd get to be that old, and vowed to spend more time with his aunts.

Just the other day, at another company, when I asked my student how his weekend was, he looked grief-stricken. Apparently a well-known sales rep at that company, his close colleague, had succumbed to pancreatic cancer and her funeral was held over the weekend. There were both Buddhist and Catholic ceremonies, as she was Buddhist but her husband is Catholic. During the rites, her two daughters began crying "Mama! Mama!", not realizing she was gone. That made everyone begin crying; the woman had been in her mid-30s and had only just begun to build the life that the old grandfather had. Many of the attendees were her colleagues, so the death threw a shroud over daily office life.

I saw the same coworker a few days later after another weekend had gone by; he's the sort who works hard and gets ahead, often skipping activities with his family, even on the weekend when he's off attending conferences and symposia.

"When I was home yesterday," he said on that Monday morning, "a butterfly flew in my house."

"Oh really?"

"I thought about it and remembered those two sad girls cried at N-----'s....her...."

"Funeral."

"Yes, funeral. I thought even though the Buddhist person who called her ghost said she was OK, I think maybe she misses her daughters. So I said to myself I shouldn't do that. I shouldn't work so hard and spend less time with my wife and kids. When I am die, if I am die early, I want my family to remember spend a lot of time with me. Now I will work hard, but not work SO hard, and try to have more weekend days with family. Tonight I want to finish my work by 7 so I can go home and eat dinner with them."

I know. Sounds completely fabricated, like something out of a contrived short story. It's not - these are two stories told to me by two different students.

Reason #8 to Love Taiwan!

So what is Reason #8 to love Taiwan?

For its aggregate awesomeness. A whole bunch of little things that add up to one big reason:

- Auntie Wu-style kung fu shoes. Awesome and comfortable (if ugly)!

- A variety of fascinating beliefs, myths and superstitions

- A wide selection of fruit. This could almost be its own Reason - in our refrigerator right now we have red dragonfruit, white dragonfruit, starfruit, lychees, pineapple, apple, grapefruit, an avocado, peaches and a large mango. Until recently we had a large papaya and a pomelo and if we wanted we could also have longan, guava, grapes, pears, watermelon or any other number of fresh, local and seasonal fruits. We have a giant custard apple too. It's a fresh food lover's dream!

- Tiny dogs in bags

- Sales in major shopping centers promoting "One Week Only - Great Discounts on Offerings for Ghosts and Ancestors!"-type sales.

- conveyer-belt sushi as fast food

- Summer temperatures so high that really, they only serve to make people's jaws drop when checking the weather. It's like an exercise in spontaneous combustibility.

- Taiwan's governing bodies are so much more interesting - unlike Congress or the Senate, the Legislative Yuan regularly makes the sports pages with its antics.

- Whatever you need done, ask around and there's always "this guy I know" who does it. Need a metal clip fixed on a handbag? There's this guy I know. Need your formal white beaded shoes washed? There's this guy I know. Not sure how to go about de-virusing stuff on old computers and putting it all onto one storage drive? There's this guy I know. Want a set of curtains that looks sort of like another set you saw, but not exactly? There's this guy I know. Need the doodad on your whatsit fixed? The widget on your dingbat adjusted? The whatchamajogger on your thingamabob re-set? There's this guy I know. And it's cheap, too!

- I actually found good packaged bottled iced tea - there's a brand in 7-11 called "Wenshan Baozhong" that is just that - unsweetened, unprocessed local Wenshan baozhong tea, iced. I prefer to avoid pre-packaged goods but if it's 200C out (see above post and cat regarding the weather) and the only choice is 7-11, then oh well.

- Waterfalls

- Compelling art, both inside temples and out

- Historic buildings and bustling urbana, right next to each other

- Old ladies who are ridiculously direct. About 2 weeks ago it was Old Mrs. Fang, my Hakka neighbor. Translated from Chinese:

"You rode your bike?"

"Yep."

"Where did you ride from?"

"Not too far - Heping-Fuxing intersection."

"Wow, that's so far. Well, it's good. Your ass looks much better now. Last month you had kind of a huge ass, but now it looks great."

"Thanks, Auntie Fang."

- Cheap, delicious seafood. I am a seafood junkie - octopus tentacles, sea urchins, abalone, white fish, basil-stewed mussels, fatty salmon, toro tuna, barbecued squid-on-a-stick, cream crabs, scallop sashimi, eel, oyster omelets, that weird monster-like pseudo-crab thing that's so expensive, big cuttlefish....mmmmm. Seasonal, too!

- Temple parades! Add here random popping-up of Taiwanese opera and bu dai xi puppet shows on the street.

- betel nut girls as cultural icons

- Beautiful mountain views and pretty good sunsets

- I know most people diss WIFLY (Taipei's almost-all-over wireless network) but I love that it's there, and I have used it a lot.

- bamboo hats. I don't have one, but I want one.

- Street food. Really only Bangkok and *maybe* India can come close to comparing to Taiwan for street fare, and Taiwan's is more hygienic and (I think anyway) varied.

- bus drivers who dress up like Santa Claus in December - and while we're at it, the giant Borg Collective-like Christmas tree of silver and red teddy bears that Takashimaya puts up every year. Creeeeeepy!

- funerals that involve huge pyramids and other structures made of canned drinks - from Taiwan beer to Apple Sidra to Pocari Sweat. When I die, forget the flowers - just buy a giant stack of beer and enjoy.

- hiking trails that are - occasionally anyway - real trails and not stairs

- the guy who hangs out in Guting Riverside Park, just south of Zhongzheng Bridge practicing his - what is it called? It's like a Chinese oboe played at temple parades - at the oddest hours. He's not very good but it's still awesome.

- Spicy food (milder than Sichuan or India but you can always make it spicy)

- butterflies! everywhere!

- 關家婆 - we all live so tightly packed in that everyone is in everyone else's business...which is great because then I can be in everyone's business and it's totally normal. I much prefer it (even with the random comments about my butt) to living in some sterile town where nobody knows anybody else and looking out your window in the general direction of your neighbor's house is considered 'rude'. If we stay here I'll make the best guan jia po (Old Busybody) this island ever saw!

- Obviously, the friendliness of the people - it's so much easier here to make local friends than other places I've visited.

And so much more...

The Fairy Temple

A long time ago we visited the Fairy Cave Temple in Keelung. You can get there by bus from the train station; it's in a part of the city rarely visited by foreigners and really quite quiet. Despite being near the harbor the feel of the area is almost suburban.

The temple is unique in that it's situated in what used to be a cave. The temple was built around the stone, and the walls retain that natural feeling. Some photos below:

Lots of visitors have carved their names on the stone walls in the back corridors.

Even in the wider sections of the temple, the walls are the same as those of the original cave.

The walls and passageways are naturally, carved out of a pre-existing cave. They've still got their natural contours.

Lots of carved marble and other white stone statues are displayed around the temple's cave walls.

Painted figures abound in one of the main rooms of the temple.

Idols and icons are carved into the stone walls at the temple.

Statues in the Fairy Temple.

The opening to another section of the Fairy Cave Temple.

Keelung Island (Heping Island?) off the coast of Keelung Harbor. You can see it from the fort near the Fairy Temple on a bluff to the west of the harbor.

Brendan in front of the most beautiful view in the world. We should get our wedding photos taken here!