I got up at 5:00 AM this morning, still a bit early for being on vacation, but better than 4:00AM. Considering the weather, 5:00 AM is quite pleasant. Sunrise this morning was at 5:42, so I decided to go shoot pictures at 5:30. At 5:29 Michelle came into the room, turing on every light in the house. When she reached where I was she looked at me with sleepy eyes and asked me just one thing, “Dad, can you turn the lights off?”
I bribed her to go back to bed with a cookie and got on my way. My goal, test my endurance in moderate weather and try to shoot some panoramic pictures. (Since I don’t have a panoramic camera, I have to shoot several shots contiguously, then stitch them together in Photoshop. I was reasonabily successful with the pictures (See photos on flickr) and managed to walk for about 2 hours, covering some areas I’ve never been before. I found a Burger King in the area, another restaurant Michelle might eat at.
I was quite pleased at the distance I walked. Considering how bad my back has been lately, I simply haven’t been able to walk like I used to. Perhaps if I can just keep it up, I’ll get it back into shape. I haven’t had any arm numbing since I’ve arrived, so either it is lack of stress, or sleeping on a mattress with a hardness just this side of diamond.
After my walk I found myself near the Cong You Bing seller so, as it was early and there was no crowd, I decided to give it a shot. Everything worked well except that I forgot I have no voice still. It makes it considerably harder to express yourself in a foreign language when you can’t make yourself be heard.
Midday we packed up and headed to Hsinchu to visits Irene’s grandparent’s new grave. Irene’s grandmother recently passed away, which is sad as she was really looking forward to seeing James for the first time.
Apparently, her grandfather was buried in a traditional tomb (I saw that once before on a Tomb Sweeping Day excursion) but now that both have gone, he’s been dug up, they’ve been cremated and re-located to a new location.
On the way to Hsinchu, I kept myself busy by typing this entry and observing the countryside. Since I brought my computer along I was able to verify something that I suspected on the drive into Taipei upon our arrival – some of the tour busses have wireless internet access. I haven’t been able to lock onto one long enough to get out to the net, but the signal is there. It is an intriguing possibility that if we could just get behind one of those buses and pace it for long enough, I could be online. Not that I have any practical use for that, but it would be a novelty.
As one leaves Taipei, you really get the feeling of how alien the landscape can be. Taipei is in a valley and like all of the mountains on Taiwan, the hills are steep. It looks like it would be fun to get into the green wilderness, but as you get close you can see how impossible that is. If the land hasn’t been hacked up and paved, it’s totally useless. 60 and 70 degree inclines are common.
Despite that, signs of man are everywhere. One one hilltop, hi-rise apartments, on the next, hundreds of tombs stare back at them. It’s surreal.
Hsinchu lies in the flat, eastern costal plane to the south of Taipei. Once out of the Taipei area the drive is dull and featureless.
We stopped briefly in Jhudong, which in terms of aesthetics demonstrates that it takes true artisans to turn concrete and sheet metal into a town that ugly. It’s not so much that there was anything you don’t see elsewhere in Taiwan, but the streets we travelled were relentless in their ugliness and clutter.
When we arrived at Mr. Huang’s sisters’ house, there was a solemn moment as joss sticks were lit in honor of their mother and father. One was given to each of us, including myself and Michelle. Michelle promptly touched the burning end, setting off a 20 minutes crying fit not only for herself but for James who decided to cry along. Thus ended the solemn moment.
The neighbor came over and brought her two boys over to play with Michelle. It is from them that we borrowed the crib that James is sleeping in so we brought gifts for them. There was a terribly complicated moment were the children needed to exchange ages so that they could properly address each other. The oldest boy was “gege” to Michelle because he was older, the other boy was “didi” because he was younger. In turn, Michelle was “meimei” and “jiejie” for younger and older sister, accordingly. Baby James was “didi” to them all.
Apparently my cold and 80% humidity was making me look like I was wilting, so finally they made me take a nap in the back room.
When it came time to leave, the boys next door were in tears, they just didn’t want Michelle to leave.
We stopped by the gravesite for a time and then returned to Taipei. By the time we returned, I was feeling awful, the cold that’s been dogging my footsteps for days finally caught hold. I barely had enough energy to get out and pick up some cold medicine (we ran out of DayQuil earlier that morning) and some dinner, a nice beef noodle soup.
I postponed uploading of the day’s pictures and narrative until the next day and crashed. It was a bad night, the only cold medicine we could get was Panadol Cold, and it’s pretty rough stuff. Anyone want to overnight Fedex me some DayQuil?