The last few days in Taiwan have really educational and devoid of climbing. Joanna and I had spent the previous mornings eating copious amounts of bread but today we said goodbye as she went off to do her lecture for the law school and I went to the lobby to await my guide for the day. As promised, I was taking an arranged trip to Kaohsiung, “a city of glamour” as the promotional literature says. It is really one of the biggest industrial bases of Taiwan with what used to be the third largest port in the world, which is another way of describing glamour, really.
My guide was a law student and assistant for the professor who had organized the trip -- Tsai-wen, or 楊采文, in Chinese characters. We were taking the high speed train, which goes really fast, but is evidently not as well used as the slower trains because of the cost. Upon arriving in Kaohsiung we were met by a student from the local university and a hired tour guide. I have no idea why the extra student was there. Tsai-wen had said he had read my articles and had volunteered to spend the day with us as a local guide, but I think that was just flattery since he was in sociology and working on local issues of ethnic identity. In the network of contacts that has been mobilized to make this trip possible, I think this poor kid got dispatched by his professor to make sure nothing happened to us. Vincent, the hired tour guide, had two masters degrees, one in finance from the University of Florida. Evidently, he used to work in the tech industry, but found guiding tourists to be more entertaining.
Our little troup then commenced a driving tour of Kaohsiung. We saw the stadium built for the World Games in 2009 – it has solar panels for roofs and is shaped to evoke the idea of a dragon. We went to a museum with an exhibit on contracts – which seemed like a strange place to take visitors, but then I wasn’t the normal visitor. We saw the Love River, which runs through the city and everyone is really proud of. Then, we went to city hall.
[My entourage at the museum]Professor Ching-Yi Liu who had arranged this trip has connections with the city here and if I were to figure out an underlying motivation for organizing this trip, it would have been to give me exposure to the pro-independence part of the country and to hear from those who are most avidly anti-Chinese state control.
So, the just recently re-elected mayor is evidently very popular, at least according to her supports. She had been imprisoned by the government because of her activism back in the 70s. I think I met her, but I’m not sure – we met a woman who may have been the major who was leaving the office on her way to a meeting. It is an understatement to say I was pretty out of what was going on most of the day since I had no decision making power or ability to make informed decisions.
We did meet with a woman whose business card only said “advisor” on it. At this point I had run out of the business cards I had brought with me – a horrific mistake given how important the exchange of business cards is here. It turned out she was a Taiwanese expat who was black listed for decades and makes her home in Belgium now. When the government rescinded the black list, she began making the trip back to Taiwan every year.
We talked in the office about local politics and political history and then it became apparent that she wanted to join our group to go see the Formosa Boulevard subway stop. In fact, she insisted that she be able to take us there. Now, I am used to wandering around cities all by myself, getting lost, and eventually finding my way home on my own. I am definitely not used to having four tour guides in tow. This is as close to an entourage as I think I will ever get.
We all trooped out of the mayor’s office and back to the car. Now there were five of us in the Toyota and I was hoping we didn’t end up picking up another person along the way. Our new companion was telling stories about the political tensions regarding independence. When we got to the subway station, Vincent dropped us off and went somewhere with the car. I think he might have been just slightly annoyed at having his job as tour guide usurped by a political activist from the mayor’s office.
The Formosa Boulevard subway station is dedicated to the “Formosa Incident,” also described by the powers that be as “the Kaohsiung violent rebellious incident.” The Formosa incident was a political protest on the part of those advocating for democracy that was crushed by the KMT (the political party that basically ruled Taiwan as a one-party state post WWII). Those involved were arrested, some were sentenced to death, though had their sentences commuted to life in prison, and the event serves as one of the markers of political resistance as well as a spark for the eventual democratizing of politics in Taiwan. It is now commemorated with the largest stained glass circular ceiling in the world. The tube station also has a center for human rights and a small open university space inside.
[My entourage at the Formosa MRT station]
After seeing the station, our political advisor guide was dropped back off at city hall and we went on to see the remains of a fort from WWII built along the beach. They have a black sand beach here which is quite nice and some cliffs. I, of course, was much more interested in the cliffs. Our final stop was to have dinner with a professor from the university (and the advisor for the student who had been with us all day). There was some connection between this professor and the one who had arranged the trip, but I am not exactly sure what the connection was and nobody said. As an introvert, I was about at the end of my ability to manage on the social front around new people. However, everyone was really nice and interesting to talk to and the food was great.
[Picture of the city from the ferry to the fort]I recovered from having to interact with people all day by promptly falling asleep on the high speed train back to Taipei. Hopefully I didn’t snore.
Wednesday was to be my climbing day and the day I had been looking forward to all week. Nobody here understood why I would want to go rock climbing and everyone attempted to dissuade me from doing so. Of course I woke to pouring rain. The guide I had hired, an American expat named Matt, said that we should drive out there anyway. He picked me up at the hotel and we took the hour plus drive to the coast where it was raining harder. He claimed it would be possible to climb the wet rocks in the rain – that the friction would be good – but suggested we walk the cliff line first and I could check it out. So we did that – getting soaking wet.
[This is what the rock looks like]
The tide was really high and so at one point we had to do a bit of boulder hopping (my least favorite thing to do) while timing it so the waves wouldn’t sweep us off the rocks. Matt said if I was pulled in that I should just stay calm because I would eventually get pushed back (it had happened to him once). There was also a really fun traverse about 30 feet above the crashing waves along a rock ledge. Some of the normal way was under water so we did get to do some mini-bouldering. We had lunch in a cave, finished the walk of the cliff line, then hiked up to the top to see the view and walk back down the managed trail. While this took about three hours – Matt was talking about the climbs and stories about climbers most of the time – it was pretty clear that climbing was not going to happen. He kept saying it was up to me, and I kept thinking I am not nearly hard core enough to climb in the pouring rain on wet rock, even though I had engineered my entire trip around these two days. In the end, I basically paid a guy to drive me to look at rocks and talk to me all day. It sounds kind of pathetic, really.
[we crossed down there]
[It seems like there should be a big circle with a red x through the picture]
The original plan was two days of climbing, but of course Thursday was pouring rain as well. I spent the day convincing myself I did NOT need the really cool Japanese-made laptop backpack for $400 US I had seen at the designer mall. Instead, I convinced myself I really DID need to save my money to buy a washing machine for about the same amount when I get back home. Thus, I went to the contemporary museum instead which cost the equivalent of $3 US to see. There were some really interesting exhibits of modern Chinese and Japanese artists, including an installation I could only call 1970s fluorescent soft porn. I also went to the climbing store conveniently located only a few blocks from the hotel where I got a guidebook for Taiwan. I may not be able to climb here, but I can look at the pictures!
For my final evening in town, Professor Liu took me to the hot springs. Now, my vision of a hot spring are pools of hot water outside, sometimes requiring a hike to get to them. The hot springs here are really spas… hotels where the water is piped in. Thus, we really went to the spa. Not having any idea what to prepare for, I did not come with a swimming suit. As we neared the hotel, I was wondering what the convention would be – in terms of what you wear in these hot springs. It turns out to be nothing. They are, however, divided by gender, so we were in the women’s public bath – which included pools of varying degrees of hotness, saunas, and this really cool rain pool which was like standing in a warm rain shower. I can now check hanging out in a public hot spring with a bunch of naked Taiwanese women off my list of things to do in life. Given that hot tubs are one of my all time favorite luxuries, this was a fabulous way to end a cold and dreary day.
The spa experience came with dinner where Ching-Yi talked about taking constitutional law from Obama and the current political situation in the U.S. We drove back to the hotel by one of the night markets, which I never did get to go to.
I’ve had an amazing time, learned an enormous amount, and promised all my new Taiwanese friends that I will take them climbing if they ever come to Hawaii – which may not actually be an incentive for them, given their reaction to my sport of choice. Of course, this morning as I pack, the sun is out and the rain is gone. I can hope, however, that I will be able to return to Taiwan someday and actually go climbing.
And I still have a business class return trip to look forward to.
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